Shenandoah National Park

One of the lovely overlooks

When we decided to hit the road one of our goals was to go to as many of the U.S. National Parks as we could. So far we have made it to...1. haha That is right this past Saturday we finally made it to a National Park! To be fair we haven't even been on the road for two months yet.


The drive to Shenandoah National Park was beautiful. We took route 211 and entered through the Thornton's Gap entrance. It was only $20 per car and you can come back for up to 7 days. Shenandoah has 4 different locations you can enter through.  Once you are in the park you drive along the beautiful Skyline Drive and can stop at the different overlooks (there are 75 total). There are also different parking areas for the different trails. The full length of Skyline Drive is 105 miles and about a 3 hour drive. Some people just come to do the drive and stop at the overlooks.

On the way to the park

Another picture from our drive there it was a gorgeous day

Mary's Rock Tunnel

We didn't do the full 3 hour drive. We maybe drove a couple hours and stopped at about 10 overlooks. We went to the Harry F. Byrd Visitor Center to get our National Park passport stamped. The Visitor Center was right next to the  trail we had planned on going to which was the Dark Hollow Falls Trail. We should have known this one would be one of the most popular trails since it had a water fall at the end. We had a hard time finding a parking spot and ended up in the grass.

A lot of the overlooks did look similar but they were all still beautiful

Stony Man Mountain Overlook (supposed to be a man's profile)

Chris enjoying the view

pretty flowers at an overlook

Being goofy at the visitor center

The Dark Hollow Falls Trail was only a 1.4 mile hike but it was pretty steep. The way back was mainly all uphill.  I was pretty excited to see some cool wildlife on the trail. The only animals we actually saw were a chipmunk and a giant rattlesnake. We weren't expecting that. Luckily there was a group in front of us that heard the snake and we all waited for it to go back uphill before we walked by.

Chris on the Dark Hollow Falls Trail

The falls at the end of the trail

I was really hoping to see a black bear on our drive. If you go you do need to check the alerts on their website first. Right now they have a lot of  trail closures due to increased bear activity.

If we have time before we leave we will go back and check out another trail since our pass is good for 7 days.