At the beginning of the year I made a few goals of things I'd like to see and do in 2013. One of those things was to visit an East Coast National Park. When I looked up a list of the parks I was amazed that there are only 3 within a day's drive of New Jersey. I'm used to spoiled Utah, with their 5 parks in one state!
When we found out BYU was going to be playing in Virginia we made plans to visit Shenandoah National Park.We also asked Kurt and Julie if we could stay at their new place on DC on the way down. They are the best and so is their new townhome.
Friday morning we woke up real early to go get some insect legs from the Smithsoanian that Paul needs for a big research collaboration project he's on. I finally got to meet the man, the legend, Ollie Flint. He was so nice and welcoming and showed us all his favorite collections and invited us to breakfast with his colleauges. It was so worth the early alarm clark to see the behind-the-scenes of the National History Museum, meet Ollie, and see Paul do-his-thang.
We only got to hang out a bit longer with Kurt and Julie before we had to go get our campsite (first-come, first serve and it was a holiday weekend!). They are doing such a great job making their new home theirs, and I loved the bit of time we got to spend with them. Then we had a 10:30 lunch at Cafe Rio, bought some groceries and headed for the mountains.
Shenandoah is a long and skinny guy (only a few miles wide in most spots), up in the tree-covered mountains (I even dare call them that, 4,000+ feet!). One of it's features is Skyline Drive (I can't decide if I'm happy that a road is a main feature or not), but it has some beautiful views and was neat to drive on (we got an extra 46 miles on it since the campground we originally planned on was Full by the time we got there!). Hi parenthesis party.
After a bit of finagling (my specialty!) we got the BEST campsite. Beautiful view, a bit more secluded and 100 ft from the AT. Much much better than the lawn strip they assigned us to at first.
Paul and I read, hiked and even took an afternoon nap. The Harts arrived just in time for a beautiful misty mountain sunset.
On Saturday we woke up to BEARS! It was the most exciting part of the trip for me. A mamma and two cubs (black bears) just eating in an apple tree in the campsite.
I've never been more thrilled to have my telephoto lens in hand.
First a cub crawled down, quickly followed by the mama. They ran away and left the second club stranded. He bolted for the trees too once he got down.
Sorry for the slow shutter speed, I wasn't ready for them to run!!
After the morning's excitement we headed to the BYU vs Virginia game. It was BLAZING hot, especially compared to the mountain air we'd been in enjoying, so we stopped for some Southern BBQ (the brisket was SO good) then hulled up in a student center and ate crappy pre-made Jamba Juices before heading to the Stadium. We couldn't stop gawking at the "Guys in Ties, Girls in Pearls" tradition.
We were so excited to meet up with these friends at the game - Kurt (right) is Paul's best friend from growing up, and Daniel (left) he has been friends with since BYU Freshman year - in fact Dan and Mandy moved into our favorite attic apartment in Provo after we moved to NJ.We adopted Benson for this tri-family picture.
After some major rain delays and some sad football losing, we stayed at the Red Carpet Inn (real classy joint) in Charlottesville. Paul and Kate had a fun game of soccer in the parking lot.
We drove back up to our campsite the next morning and happily found that nothing was ruined by the massive amounts of rain. We packed up then enjoyed some nice viewpoints on Skyline Drive and found a nice part of the Appalachian Trail to hike.
I was so sad to leave and I hope we can get back to Shenandoah real soon.
.JPG)
