Shenandoah National Park

April 30 - May 9, 2025

I arrived at Shenandoah National Park on Wednesday, April 30. It was about an hour drive from Sherando Lake. Along the way, I stopped in Waynesboro, near Sherando, for groceries and to do laundry.

I  stayed the first three nights in Shenandoah at Big Meadows Campground, the largest of four campgrounds in the park. It is a rather basic campground. On the plus side, it has restrooms with flush toilets, and a few restrooms have utility sinks with hot water. These are very handy for doing dishes. There is freshwater at these sinks and at some other spigots throughout the campground. There are no hookups (no electric or water) for vans, RVs, or trailers. I don’t need the electric usually. I have substantial battery power, and I have solar to recharge. The only time I have an issue with this is when there are extended days (over five days) of cloud cover. It always has worked out fine.

Big Meadows

There are showers run by a concessionaire, who also runs a small camp store. They also run a general store next to the Visitor Center, which is about a mile away, and they run the Lodge, which is about a quarter mile walk. The showers cost $5.00 for ten minutes and require twenty quarters. In all of my travels, I have never seen a shower system this expensive. The camp store also sells wood. It costs $10.50 for about six pieces. A half-gallon of milk was $5.99. I needed neither wood nor milk, but the prices give you an idea of how these concessionaires with government contracts can charge ridiculous prices for goods and services.

I met a guy named Brad from Florida doing a bike tour. He was at the campground ranger station, and I struck up a conversation with him about his bike and the route he was taking. He has a Trek 520. He told me Trek has stopped making them, which was a surprise to me. I think Trek has been making them for something like forty years. Brad had 40mm Schwalbe tires that looked really good on the bike. He had rear panniers and a handlebar bag, no front panniers. He is from Florida and flew into Washington DC. He had planned to ride to Asheville via Skyline Drive and the Blue Ridge Parkway. He knows he has to make some changes to his route due to many parts of the Blue Ridge being closed in North Carolina.

He set up camp in the tent area not far from me. I invited him to lunch. I made a box of pasta, telling him it’s a normal thing for me to cook a box of pasta and add a jar of sauce, which gives me four meals. He laughed and told me with him around it’s more likely there’d just be two meals. We laughed. He had told me that he had bonked the day before and had underestimated the need for food. He also thought he had gotten dehydrated. He certainly did eat a lot of pasta! The next morning, I gave him a Cliff Bar and a bottle of Gatorade before he left.

Skyline Drive

I moved to Loft Mountain Campground on the fourth night, a Saturday, because I had not been able to reserve a campsite at Big Meadows. Two campers I met at Sherando Lake had recommended Loft Mountain as being nicer and “quieter” than Big Meadows. I think it was quieter. The campsites seem to be a bit more spread out and shielded from each other by tree cover. I liked both places.

There was a significant thunderstorm that evening, lots of thunder, lightning, and heavy rain. I was safely tucked away in my van. I felt bad for those with tents. In torrential rain, funny things can happen with tent camping. For example, it could leak to varying degrees and/or you could end up with your tent in an inch or more of water.

As evidence, that evening just before sunset, I met some guys who were in the bathroom who were using the electric hand dryer to try to dry out their clothes. Somehow, they had become soaked. They were talking about leaving, rather than spending the night, as it was only about forty miles for them to drive home to Harrisonburg. I had talked with them earlier, before the rains started. They had been playing three-on-three soccer on a small field. They had portable, fold-up goals they had brought with them.

I went for a walk in the afternoon and talked with some camp hosts at the campground ranger station. I had noticed a lot of trees with a blue tape wrapped around them, and I wanted to know what it represented. One host told me they were trees that were ready for another treatment for the Emerald Ash Borer, which has caused a great deal of damage to the Ash trees in the park and throughout the eastern part of the United States. They “medicate” these trees every three years in the hope they save them, but there has been a lot of damage.

Sunday morning it had stopped raining, and I exited the van to a dense fog. Visibility was around fifty feet at most. I would return to Big Meadows today, but not until I could see better to drive. Visibility improved with sunrise, enough for me to drive a mile and a half down off the mountain on which the campground was located. This was a change in elevation of about 300 feet. I parked at a Wayside General Store on Skyline Drive. I had hoped there would be less fog and the lower elevation. After sitting there about a half hour, my hopes were fulfilled, so I began driving slowly back north thirty miles to Big Meadow. Visibility improved to around 200 feet or better most of the way. I parked at the  Big Meadows Visitor Center until around noon, which is when one can check into new reservations. I stayed there six more nights.

Despite a couple of bad storms, the weather was mostly very nice for the ten days I was here. The park was great for bike riding. Like along the Blue Ridge Parkway near Sherando, the road surface here is excellent. There was very little traffic, even on weekends, and drivers were conscientious about passing safely. Riding south, there is a seven mile section, the end marked by Lewis Mountain Campground, that rolls up and down with shorter hills. On some days I did repeats on this section, fourteen miles to each circuit. Going south after Lewis Mountain, there are bigger and longer hills. Big Meadows Campground is at 3,598’ elevation. The road to Lewis Mountain fluctuates between 3,500’ and 3,100’, and the lowest point I hit riding south was about 2,300’.  I rode five of the ten days I was there, 174 miles total with 15,500’ of climbing and descending.

I think I could spend several months camping and riding in these areas. Skyline Drive is 105 miles long. At the southern terminus of the park, the road continues right into the Blue Ridge Parkway, which is 469 miles long. There are several campgrounds along the length of the road. I could see spending time at several different campgrounds. Of course, construction is ongoing along many miles of the Blue Ridge in North Carolina. Maybe next year I will spend more time there camping and riding. I envision doing so for a couple months.