Shenandoah National Park

I'm going to start this post with an apology for how far behind I am in updating you all. Currently I'm in Pine Grove, PA about halfway to New Jersey. The last few hundred miles have flown by in a blur of several quick town stops and hiking inbetween. As I hike north I hit more and more towns but have been taking fewer "zero" days, this doesn't leave much time for doing all my adulting and unfortunately the blog gets left aside. Nevertheless look forward to many updates next week when I take a few days off.  

With that out of the way let's talk about Shenandoah, a lovely piece of our national park system. The main attraction is Skyline Drive which shares the narrow ridgeline with the AT. While the drive is pretty, for an AT hiker it is certainly a departure from more wild sections of trail to the south. It reminded me greatly of Abbeys warnings in Desert Solitaire. Fortunately there were lots of blackberry milkshakes and burgers to remind us why being near civilized people can be nice.  

This was also a weird stretch of trail for me personally, after taking a few days off I hopped back on trail with almost no hikers. I spent much of my time in the park hiking and camping solo which was a pretty unique experience on this adventure. While fun at first it got a little tedious after a few days and running into known hikers further north was welcome.  

This is going to be a fairly short post because frankly most of the hiking here passed without much of great notice. The green tunnel has fully set in and this was the first time it was noticeable. There were a few cool rocky peaks (see above) and some pretty views of the Shenandoah Valley.  

There were also some wonderful sunsets... 

The rest of the time was spent either strolling through seas of green looking for bears or resting at the nearest wayside drinking as many blackberry milkshakes as you can stand.  

While this wasn't the most exciting stretch of trail I've covered, it was one of the easiest and a welcome relief after the tough section to the south. Also, did I mention blackberry milkshakes?