Saturday, May 28, 2016

Day Four - VA & WV

Monday, May 23

After waking up and screwing around on Katie's wifi and playing with her puppy, we headed off to McDonalds for breakfast, then off to Shenandoah National Park. It was another beautifully gothic day, dreary with low-hanging clouds obscuring the views and intermittant rain, which canceled  our plans to tackle the rock scramble at Bearfence. Every rock scramble we've ever attempted has been canceled by rain. Maybe we're not supposed to ever scramble.

The first place we stopped was at The Point overlook, where there's a little trail down to a rock outcropping that you can climb on. While taking photos there, we passed a group of Asians. They were poaching plants. I had just seen the Facebook post by the park about it being a problem and asking that any suspicious activity be reported, and when people are pulling plants out of the ground and saying "that's the wrong plant," I think that's out of the realm of suspicious and into Scooby Doo levels of Obvious. So we raced up the extremely steep dirt trail and barely missed identifying their vehicle, but had enough details that we could report them anyway.

As luck would have it, we ran into them again at the Byrd Visitor Center. One of the women pulling plants out of the ground was walking through the parking lot back to their vehicle. So we 'took a walk around the parking lot to stretch our legs,' then promptly went and reported their vehicle description, occupant description, and tag numbers. It was a bit of an adrenaline rush. We got our passport stamped, got some trail recs, and headed off to hike our waterfalls. All the while we cackled over our new calling in life: tattling on people. Park Narcs, coming to TruTV this fall.

Today's trail was the Rose River-Dark Hollow Falls loop, which features two 70-foot waterfalls over four miles. It was probably the best trail we've ever hiked, competing pretty hard with the Jenny Lake/Inspiration Point trail in Grand Teton National Park. It was technically challenging without a whole bunch of self-loathing (like yesterday's), long enough to be a workout without taking a whole day, and we followed whitewater for about half of it. It started as a horse trail, then a rocky, narrow trail built into the bank alongside the river (downhill... and down... and down...), leveled out into something downright pleasant, and then slowly made itself back up steeper and steeper until reaching Dark Hollow Falls. Then it's all graded, flat, easy fire road back to the trailhead, so a really great cooldown. Around the point we started going uphill, the rain began in earnest. We were dressed for it, so that was fine, and then the thunder started. We were below the treeline and miles from buildings, so we just kept going.

First I pushed up my sleeves. Then I took off the thin, sweat-wicking long-sleeve shirt. Then I was just sweaty enough that I might as well get wet, so I took off the rain jacket too, just in time to reach the fire road and the falls. We were leapfrogging this family of four and I felt bad for them because every time they saw us, I was taking off some article of clothing. Oh well. It was 55 degrees, but we were so sweaty and hot from the work of climbing almost 1000 feet in the rain, through a trail so wet it saturated past my hiking boots and wool socks, the cool air felt GREAT. We got a lot of amazing photos on that hike.

With the hike done, and stuffing my face with homemade trail mix and water, we headed out of the park and toward West Virginia. The towns in western Virginia are really cute. Then you hit the mountain that is the border between Virginia and West Virginia (via US 33). The trip over Shenandoah Mountain, however, is like 10 miles of narrow, two-lane road and 9% grade up and down. It. Took. FOREVER. West Virginia makes you work for it.

Almost all of WV was like that, honestly. The moments I got to actually go 55 were magical. And yeah, West Virginia is basically a living stereotype. I saw at least one outhouse.

Our campground tonight is Seneca Shadows, with a beautiful view of Seneca Rocks. This is the nicest campground I've ever been to. It's manicured, landscaped, gorgeous, and a teacher taking a bunch of high schoolers backpacking invited us over for their extra cheeseburgers. Our immediate neighbors are metal heads. We saw two rainbows over the Rocks.  And I found a penny on our tentpad.

Shortly before becoming Park Narcs.

Our trail in Shenandoah had so much pretty water!



Rainbow over Seneca Rocks and our campground in West Virginia.

WV home rainy home.

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