Virginia Journey #1 Lands Run Falls Trail
This will be a longer post than some other but it is all in good taste. Kelly and I, instead of doing our overnight from Port Clinton to PA-309 to add another small chunk of the Appalachian Trail, we headed to Virginia, which is home to Shenandoah National Park! The park is an area of 200,000 acres of land! Within that land are a variety of trails calling out to us.
Lands Run Falls Trail
After being in the car for three hours and change we decided that it would be a great idea to stretch our legs and do a small easy trail, which lead to a waterfall. The trail is a fairly easy rocky trail which leads you down to a waterfall area. the falls however were almost dry due to hardly any rain. The trail also offered some rock structures off to the side where you could climb a decent elevation. The cool part about this trail was the serenity of the area and the huge trees. The trail continues down a flat trail which becomes a horse trail, however in October it gets darker earlier so we decided rather than continuing our journey would should head beck to the car. Also due to the elevation, the fog rolls in pretty think and becomes difficult to see.
The fog
Once we go back in the car we decided to continue on Skyline drive which is the road that goes all the way through the park and is 106 miles! We saw an overlook called Indian Run Overlook although it was foggy we decided to stop. I decided to go over the rock wall down a trail and Kelly had decided to stay up at the overlook. Kelly had waved to a person on the road where he then pulled over and was yelling to me playfully “Hey Mike i can’t see you i’ll be your beacon and throw a rope!” I decided to head back up an meet the gentlemen. As I got back up to the wall I saw a white van, which is one i could see being converted to be lived in and a man in the drivers seat with a bushy beard, a golden bandanna, and a tobacco pipe in his mouth; he went by the name Smokey John. He was spending time in the area while he was waiting for a friend to get released from the hospital, he was filling his time with driving around and visiting the various overlooks. He was a very interesting dude and had a lot of insight about a lot of things. This made the first day very interesting and unique for sure. After leaving Smokey John we headed back to Woodstock where would rest up for our next day.
Safe travels,
mike