Month: September 2023

Skyline Drive runs for a little more than 100 miles through Shenandoah National Park in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

The northern park entrance is in Front Royal, Virginia – about 70 miles west of Washington DC. Skyline Drive winds roughly north and south to near Waynesboro, Virginia.

I got there about a month to early for the prime viewing of the fall colors in the park.

There are a number of overlooks and places to park along Skyline Drive, where the highest elevation is 3,680 feet.

Official Website: www.nps.gov/shen/index.htm

I started my day driving west on a highway south of but roughly parallel to the Mason-Dixon Line. I passed exits for towns whose names rang a bell from Civil War history.

Places along Highway 430 like Frederick, Sandy Hook and Boonsborough in Maryland and Harpers Ferry in West Virginia. I crossed over the Potomac River along the state lines of Maryland and West Virginia.

Due to an unexpected road closure, I spent a couple of hours driving south on the mostly two-lane Stonewall Jackson Memorial Highway.

I crossed the Shanendoah River and two of its forks.

Along the way I saw a lot of small-town Virginia.

It wasn’t the day I had envisioned, but it was certainly a change of scenery.