209. Shenandoah National Park

April 30-May 21, 2026

I arrived at Big Meadows Campground in Shenandoah on April 30 and stayed for three weeks. It was such a fantastic experience. The park sits high in the Blue Ridge Mountains, which is one section of the Appalachian Mountains. The Blue Ridge stretches approximately 600 miles in a northeast-southwest orientation from Pennsylvania to Georgia. Shenandoah National Park is entirely in Virginia and contains nearly 200,000 acres. Skyline Drive runs along the ridge for the length of the park, about 105 miles, from Front Royal on the north end to Waynesboro on the south. There are numerous overlooks where one can stop and take in a majestic view. From Waynesboro, Skyline Drive connects with the Blue Ridge Parkway. The Parkway continues for 470 miles where it ends in Cheerokee, North Carolina, near the entrance to Great Smokey Mountains National Park

Big Meadows is an area about midway through Shenandoah at milepost 51. The name comes from the large meadow that sits on a flat level expanse of land. The Harry F. Byrd Sr. Visitor Center is here as well as a general store and restaurant known as  the “Big Meadows Wayside.” Elevation at the visitor center is 3,500’. FYI, the valley below is at about 1000’. The campground is about one mile west of the visitor center and sits at 3,600’. There are approximately 220 campsites. The area is thickly wooded and campsites are spaced nicely, not on top of each other.

The campground fills on the weekends. During the week it seems maybe half filled. There is quite a difference in the overall environment and noise level weekdays and weekends. I enjoy both. It is quieter during the week, more opportunity to meet and talk with people on the weekends, though one can find quiet on the weekend and people to meet on the weekdays pretty easily.

Not far from the campground in Big Meadows Lodge. It was constructed in 1939 and has a rustic, welcoming appeal. There is a restaurant and a pub as well as a large sitting room with a fireplace and great views. There is a deck off the back with spectacular views of the valley and mountain ridges to the east. I had breakfast there several days and it was great.

The highest point in Big Meadows is a short walk from the Lodge, Blackrock Peak, around 3,700’. Do not let the name conjure up any ideas about strenuous hiking or dangerous circumstances. From the Lodge to the Peak, it is only about two-tenths of a mile along a developed trail that is only about seventy feet higher than the Lodge.

 Blackrock is great for sunsets and photos as well as meeting people gathered for the experience. I would come to Blackrock often in the evening for the sunset. The Lodge was not yet open when I arrived April 30. Due to that, in part, and to the cool weather, I was the only person here for the sunsets the first few days. The Lodge opened May 4, bringing many more people into Big Meadows area, and there were more people at Blackrock for the sunsets, but it was never crowded.

From the peak, one has a panoramic view of the valley below and additional mountain ranges, beyond which the sun sinks slowly into the west. It is a majestic view, one that breeds contemplation. There are also little towns scattered along the valley. A couple small airports are indicated by flashing bright strobes. There is an old steam railroad that spews out smoke from time to time. Somewhere unseen is Interstate 81.

One of the main reasons I like coming to Shenandoah is for bicycling. The roads are nicely paved with challenging hills and long sweeping curves, often with great views of Shenandoah Valley to the west. The road elevation changes significantly with the lower elevations being around 2,300’ and higher elevations around 3,500. I did 400 miles in eleven days of riding with 30,000’ of cumulative hills. One day I rode down out of the park to Elkton, which was at about 1,200 feet. Great stuff.

Prior to Shenandoah, I had been riding flatlands all this year. I was on Talahi Island in Georgia for ten days, then Gulf Islands for five weeks, and it was all flat there. When in Danbury, I use the rail trail, and that is mostly flat. It has one hill that rises 300’ over five miles, which is a very slight incline. The hills here at Shenandoah can change 300’ in one mile. I like the change, I like hills. They add to my ride, a great mental-emotional experience, especially the work involved in the uphill, though downhill is certainly fun. Cycling here is a high energy experience!

One other note about riding, it seems this time of year traffic is low density and drivers seem very conscientious of pass safely. There is no marked shoulder but it is a pretty wide road. It does not feel at all dangerous. The speed limit is 35 mph or less all the time.

One thing unexpected is how different the weather has been from my previous trips here in early May of 2024 and 2025, when the weather was more towards the hot side. I looked at my journal entries from those trips, and I see where I had written how glad I was when the temps cooled down into the 50s overnight. This year it has been more like hoping it does not cool down too much overnight. On two nights it went down to 28 and there were many nights in the 30s. It did not get anywhere near hot weather I had the previous years.

I was able to go for bike rides and/or hikes on most days. There was rain a few days, but mostly in the form of showers on only part of the days. There was only one all-day rain affair, so I was able to get outdoors at some point most days for an extended period of time.

There are around 500 miles of hiking trails in the park, including around 100 miles of the Appalachian Trail (AT). The AT comes right through Big Meadows and many through hikers spend a night or two here. I talked with several people who were doing the entire trails. Others are doing sections. One woman is doing the entire length, hiking solo. We met in the campground laundry room. She had completed 450 miles in 40 days and was taking a few days “off” staying in the Lodge. Her mom was driving down from Ohio to spend time together, and she was really looking forward to it. She was hiking all the way to the north end in Maine.

FYI the AT is about 2,200 miles long and Big Meadows is at about the 550 mile mark from the southern end. She explained she did not begin right at the southern terminus, which is at Springer Mountain in Georgia. I found it odd, when I visited Amicalola Falls State Park last year, hikers usually approach Springer Mountain via an 8.8-mile approach trail from the park. I am not sure why they don’t just officially begin the AT from the park. She said she would go do the one hundred mile section she missed after finishing at Mount Katahdin in Maine in September. However it is done, south to north, north to south, or in segments, it’s a lot of walking!

Another hiker was sitting outside one of the restrooms while waiting for his phone to charge. The bathroom has outlets. That was a cold kind of day, 46 degrees and windy, cloudy and damp, and he was wearing shorts! He said a lot of his stuff got wet overnight. There was a storm with thunder, lightning, torrential rain, and about ten minutes of pea-sized hail. I would have been freezing, but he seemed okay. I offered him some warm pasta, as I had just made a batch, but he said he had eaten down at the Wayside. He was going to wait for the phone to charge up then hop back on the trail. He was “only” doing about 200 miles but also told me he had done the entire trail five years ago.

One morning I was out walking and nearing what I thought would be the end of my stroll. I was catching up to a guy walking with a book in his hand. He had a finger in it at a page I assumed he been reading, but now he was just walking. I thought maybe he as a college student studying up with exams coming in the week ahead. I asked him what he was reading. He showed me the cover, The Secret Life of God: Discovering the Divine Within You, by Rabbi David Aaron. He said it belonged to one of the friends he was here with. He and his friends had just finished the semester at Emory and were on a post semester road trip. They were from Connecticut, too!

He asked what I was reading. I told him I had been reading four books while here. One is a textbook titled Explorations: Biological Anthropology. It is an open education text. Open education publications refers to the fact that they are generally free to access and have liberal copyright policies. Biological anthropology traces the human evolution from a scientific perspective with focus on anatomy, genetics, and physiology. The other three books have to do with some aspect of spirituality and culture: The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck, Soul Retrieval by Sandra Ingerman, and Spirits of the Earth by Bobby Lake-Thom.

We ended up walking and talking for close to ten minutes about our books, about school and his friends’ trip, about Old Rag Mountain and the hike they did there, and about running.

He asked what the Native American and the Soul Retrieval books were about, and I described briefly what I had obtained from the books.

The Native American book tells of the Great Creator and how he/she speaks to humans, offering guidance, through spirits in all living things as well as those thought of as not being alive, like the wind, clouds, seasons, mountains, and other scared places.

Soul Retrieval seem to have some overlap with this, with humans and other living beings having spirits and there being an enormous spirit world, and that through various experiences, especially traumatic ones, we could lose parts of our souls, but they could be found and brought back to make us whole, to experience healing.

It is interesting that Dr. Peck also talks about traumatic experiences having negative effects on one’s life, but the healing framework he describes and uses in his practice is psychotherapy. Through psychotherapy, exploring the mind and one’s experiences through discussion, one can once again become whole, experience healing.

What strikes me is that I had the choice, as I passed him, to ask that question or just walk past and say nothing, just get back into my van and continue my previous train. Choosing to say, “What are you reading?” changed all that.

On a lighter note, after being at Shenandoah for about ten days, I was just about out of my skim milk. At some point I might want some other groceries, too. But for now, I thought I would buy some milk at the general store at the Wayside. Driving even the shortest distance to a town with a Walmart or other grocery store would mean about sixty miles round trip. That would be between at least six gallons of gas costing over $25, plus the cost of the milk. I figured if can buy half gallons of milk here, even at $4 each, three would cost me $12. So, I went to the wayside and picked up some milk. I was shocked at the cost, $6.79 for a half gallon, certainly more than I expected. But I bought two, and it was still cheaper than driving to Walmart 😊.

On my last two days here, a group of about thirty kids and their teachers camped adjacent to my campsite. They were from Aiden Montessori School in Washington, DC. They were so much fun. The sound of their shouting and laughter was joyous. It seemed they could make fun out of nothing. They played with a soccer ball, a frisbee, and they made up games that just seemed centered on words they made up as a song or a saying they repeated over and over again, like one day they were singing “Banana, Banana, No Banana, You’re a Banana!” They did it over and over again. And they would laugh, laugh, laugh, till they fell down laughing.

Oh, and the birds. I use the Merlin app, free from Cornell University, to determine which birds are singing as I sit at my campsite and walk around the area. Over the three weeks, Merlin detected eighty-seven different species. It was quite a symphony of musical notes. Robins and Catbirds seemed to visit me most often, while I was sitting at my campsite. They would often come quite close, withing a few feet and stand there, looking at me, as if visiting and even talking with me. There were also chipmunks and yellow butterflies, more wonders of nature. And of course, I talk back with all of them …