Hiking, in the Best Way Possible

In the Fall semester, Grace was able to go on a couple of day hikes with a UDel hiking club.

When she came home for her extended winter break, she wanted to go on some hikes around here. We were only partially successful, getting out once to hike a few miles in the Woodlawn tract along the Brandywine River.

Rocky frozen run-off

We hope to get out more in better weather, but it gave me great joy to be out in the woods (however close to home) with my daughter.

Path skirting a rocky shoulder

We took some nice pictures during the hike, and she often said "you should paint that". Indeed I should...

Stream in harsh light

And maybe I will.

Walk Along the Brandywine

It's getting toward Fall, and that means getting out and hiking (or walking in this case) whenever able. Amp and Julia had meetings to get ready for the Fall musical for school (Bye Bye Birdy), so Grace and I took the opportunity to get out and spend a couple of hours walking along the Brandywine near home.

It was a perfect day, about 75 degrees with no humidity, and we hiked a well-known trail from the Thompson's Bridge parking lot north along the creek (river) and back again.

Brandywine looking north

Water level over the gravelly bottom was low, and we saw a pair of kayakers attempt to run a shallow riffle and get hung up on the rocks in the few inches of water.

Brandywine looking south

Many others were out, including kayakers, walkers, bikers, and dog walkers. Grace found a nice tree at one point and needed to climb it (I would have if I were her), and she took a bunch of nice pictures with her camera from last Christmas.

Thing 2 up a tree (good place for a geocache...)

The highlight of the day's walk (other than the fact that my daughter suggested going for a hike in the woods with Dad!) was the sighting of a big bird swooping from tree to tree over the creek. The first time I saw it, my thought was "did I just see a bald eagle?". The second and third times, paying close attention, there was no doubt that this was what we saw. From a distance of maybe 60 to 70 yards, it was clearly a smallish bald eagle. I have seen many of these flying over the Sassafras River over the years, but I had never seen one so close to home. Thrilling. And a great highlight to a great day.

Hiking with Gracie

Grace wanted to go hiking with Daddy, and it was a beautiful day with no particular plans, so she and I headed off into the Woodlawn Tract (now part of the First State National Monument) and did an easy 2.9 miles of walking in the woods.

Hike in Google Terrain from GPSVisualizer.com

We started in the same parking lot we often do because she had heard me tell of a cool old ruined farmhouse farther down a different branch of the trail than we had done on a few previous trips.

Hike in Google Hybrid from GPSVisualizer.com

The area is spiderwebbed with trails, and I know we've been all over this area, but apparently hadn't done the one little stretch of main trail that this old building was on (at least not with her).

Curly pigtail hair day

She wanted to take our good camera (Canon EOS Rebel T3) and take pictures on her own. [All pictures are taken entirely by her except the one she is in]

Stream

She very much enjoyed looking for flowers, pretty scenes and interesting plants to take pictures of.

The old ruined farmhouse

The picture taking time made our 2.9 miles over 1.5 hours a stroll at best, but the point wasn't to put in miles.

Old fieldstone retaining wall

We found purple flowers.

Purple flowers

And white flowers.

White flowers

And more white flowers.

More white flowers

On the way back to the car, she asked if we could go out again tomorrow, hike a different trail, and take more pictures. It's a definite possibility...

Old Rag Mountain

April 3, 2015, Shenandoah National Park, Virginia.

This was the best part of my abbreviated Shenandoah trip. Being out in the woods is a good thing, no matter what.

Friday morning 8:45am, we arrive in the parking lot for the trailhead. It is overcast with intermittent sprinkles of rain. The forecast is for rain off and on in the morning, with chances of thunderstorms throughout much of the afternoon and early evening. Winds are gusty and persistent, and are supposed to get even stronger as the day wears on. Temps begin in the high 50's and are supposed to get into the low 70's in the afternoon.

Weakley Run

This hike is on National Park Service lands for Shenandoah National Park, and this is such a popular hike that there is a ranger shed at the parking lot for collecting fees. We pay the $15 weeklong pass per car, and make sandwiches. This is a very popular hike, and the parking lot, which is quite large, routinely fills up. Between the crappy forecast and the fact that it is Good Friday, there are only a handful of cars in the lot when we set out at around 9:15.

The first 0.8 miles of the hike is up a paved (but largely unused) dead end road that ends at the real trailhead. We bear left up the hill on the Ridge Trail, which will rise gently for a little while before switchbacking up the shoulder of the mountain. Over the course of the first three miles of this 8 mile loop, there will be some hard climbing, rock scrambling, and hand over hand climbing before attaining the summit. The views from the top are supposedly worth the routine crowds, but with today's overcast skies and rain, there might not be too much to see.

More Weakley Run

As we start up the Ridge Trail, I notice almost immediately that while my legs feel good, I have no wind whatsoever. I am not a great climber under any circumstances, but this is noticeably unusual. Not in the sense that I am worried about having a heart attack or being in any kind of distress, I am just very tired and find it hard to catch my breath. We are only perhaps 1 mile up the real trail when I decide that I need to do what is right for me, and tell the group that I will hike the easier loop around the bottom of the mountain and meet them somewhere on the far side.

We have seen few people to this point, but as I hike back down toward the trailhead I pass 7 or 8 groups of people, averaging 3-5 people per group, who are going up. I am feeling fine now that I am not climbing, but I am coughing some, so I am starting to think maybe the cold I had earlier in the week is lingering.

Stone cairns

Back at the trailhead (0.8 miles from the lot), I head the other way around the loop on an old fire road that is the Weakley Hollow Trail. The first mile of this parallels the banks of Weakley Run, a picturesque mountain stream. Knowing I have time to kill while the others do the tough work, I spend a decent amount of time rock hopping around the stream and taking pictures and video.

Further up the trail, the stream veers off and the hiking gets quieter. Ted has given me one of a pair of his walkie talkies, and somewhere on the lower Weakley Hollow Trail, I get an announcement that they have reached the summit.

Yet more Weakley Run

The hollow I am hiking through has signs of settlement from long ago in the form of rough stone walls and stone cairns whose purpose I cannot fathom. They are rectangular in shape, made of the same fieldstone as the walls, but are not hollow like foundations would be, and seem to be solid up to a height of several feet. Curious. I like old stuff like this. Which I guess explains the Archaeology college degree.

About 2.5 miles up this trail, the Saddle Ridge trail goes up the other side of the mountain. The guys will be coming down this way. I'm feeling OK going slow, so I will go partway up and meet them. Somewhere around this time I get another announcement that they reached the actual summit. In the overcast, they couldn't tell that the first high point they reached was a false summit, and they had another section of difficult trail and climbing to reach the real summit.

Saddle Ridge Trail, toward Skyline Drive

On my side, I climbed a little ways past the Old Rag Day Shelter (a small open sided picnic hut), and sat on a large boulder and had a peaceful wait for the others. After a while, they came down the trail, and we did an uneventful 3.4 (ish) miles back to the car, arriving at about 2:30pm.

All told, I hiked an easy 9 miles at a leisurely pace, according to the GPS. The others did about 8 miles, but a much more difficult hike to be sure.

Old Rag Mountain from Skyline Drive

I'm happy that the guys had some visibility at the top of the mountain and were able to get partial views off the mountain. Not completely clear views, but certainly better than the total overcast and zero visibility they could have gotten.

As for me, the idea of summiting a mountain isn't the be-all and end-all of a successful hike, but I do hate missing a good vista and the related photo ops. Fortunately, I also like streams, rocks and laurel thickets, and I got to see plenty of those.

Old Rag Mountain - Part of my hike

Notes on the hike track: Parking lot is at upper right. The gray area is the 0.8 miles to get to the actual National Park Boundary and the start of the real hike. I forgot to turn on my GPS, but the first mile or so of the Ridge Trail goes almost due south from where the gray and green areas meet. It switchbacks up onto the ridge line, and then climbs west/southwest up to the summit (at 3291 feet; the elevation gain from parking is about 2510 feet). From the summit, it drops west/northwest along the ridge line to meet up with my hike track. The loop is typically done clockwise, as the guys did. In total, it is listed as an 8 mile loop. My linear out and back shown here is about 3.5 miles each way, with an added 1 mile out and 1 mile back that is not shown. Total for me is therefore around 9 miles.

Shenandoah and Bust

I would like to say that the above should be a rallying cry of Shenandoah or Bust!, but unfortunately for me, the title, as it stands, is accurate. I went to the Shenandoah. And it was a bust. Perhaps "bust" is too strong a characterization. Other trips have certainly had their challenges, but this was the most disappointing.

Earlier in the week leading up to our Thursday afternoon departure, I had not been feeling well, and had been running a fever a few days prior. By Thursday, I was feeling mostly back to normal, and the biggest concern I had was for an unseasonably chilly and possibly rainy forecast.

Sun and clouds over Shenandoah National Park

Thursday afternoon we got on the road in two cars earlier than expected, leaving Dave's at about 4:45pm. Including a brief Wendy's dinner stop, we were at the Quality Inn in Culpeper Virginia, half an hour from Friday's planned hike - Old Rag Mountain - by about 10pm. Old Rag Mountain (Ridge and Saddle trails) is one of the more difficult (and popular) signature hikes of Shenandoah National Park.

Friday was a rainy forecast, but the desire to do Old Rag Mountain not on a Saturday, due to potential crowding on the trails, had everyone in universal agreement that bringing rain gear and making the best of it was what we needed to do. I will post my day's hike separately, along with a partial GPS track and some nice pictures, but the short summary version here is that everyone else went up and over the summit of the mountain and down the other side (an 8 mile loop with some very difficult climbing) while I went up the first 1.8 miles, and then spent the next 7.2 miles backtracking, looping around the base of the mountain and meeting them on the other side, then backtracking again to finish the loop with them. I'm not a good elevation climber to begin with, but I just didn't have any wind at all. That's unusual even for me. So at 9 easy miles, I actually put in more mileage than they did (they just did all the difficult and fun miles).

Stream below Old Rag Mountain

Friday night. The day's intermittent rains continued, and the breeze picked up noticeably. Setting up tents was a comical interlude of windblown tent pieces flying around, but everything was eventually set up and firmly staked down as best we could. The forecast for the night was rainy, cold and very windy.

Despite the chill and the damp, it wasn't safe (or practical) to light a fire because of the high winds, and a charcoal fire to cook steaks, potatoes and veggies wasn't going to work either. So we swapped planned dinners and used the camp stove to reheat frozen turkey chili. It was a serviceable dinner in lousy conditions. It was around this time that Phil's "party tent" (pavilion thing) caught an especially strong gust of wind and did a Mary Poppins off into the underbrush, hopelessly bending its aluminum frame [And thus a veteran of many many trips over the years found its final rest in a dumpster].

With no more shelter outside of the tents, and continued rain and gusty winds, we adjourned to our tents for a little makeshift reading and sleep. The sleep part ended up being problematic. I was cold to begin with, and not feeling all that well. I wore long johns and sweatpants to bed, along with thick wool socks, a thermal top and tshirt, and a wool cap. The gusty winds were extremely loud and buffeted the tent mercilessly. I'm almost amazed that the tents stayed up properly through the night, which is a testament to how well they are built. There was rain off and on until probably after midnight, and when the rain and winds finally subsided, the temperature dropped. A lot. [The car thermometer the next morning at 8am would show 35 degrees F]. I know I slept off and on throughout the night, but my main memory is of shivering, shaking, chills and chattering teeth. At one point I put my heavy fleece jacket on and it didn't help much. When we got up in the morning, I felt terrible and couldn't get warm. I would have put my winter coat on, but my extra warm stuff that was in the tent had all gotten wet. We found out later that the ground cloth under my side of the tent had blown out of place, and the wet ground was wicking up through the floor. Shoes, coat, gloves all soaked through. Swell.

Remnants of days gone by

Saturday morning. Over a cup of coffee around the picnic table, we had some snow flurries. Clearly, Mother Nature was mocking me. We then went to the little restaurant down the road from the campground and had a hot breakfast, which didn't interest me much. We went back to the campsite to prepare for a hike, which I didn't feel up to at all. There was talk of breaking camp later that day and doing the last night in a motel (Saturday night was forecast for clear but just as cold if not colder).

Saturday. Ultimately, once we figured out that 3 people and the necessary gear would fit in one car, I loaded all the non-essential stuff into my car and drove home. The views along Skyline Drive leaving the park were amazing, as it had mostly cleared overnight, and I took a few decent pictures. The drive home was uneventful, but not particularly pleasant, as I was still having chills and was very tired. I stopped in Warrenton VA to get a drink (and a convenient geocache in the parking lot), and was safely home by 4:15pm. I think this was a better choice than to have everyone change their plans to accommodate me.

So, as my daughter Grace would say, epic fail. Or if not Epic, at least Fail. Not that it was a total loss, insofar as the camaraderie is always great, and the hiking for me on Friday was still pretty nice. Bailing on your comrades totally sucks though. In wargaming terms, this would be best described as a unit reaching its Break point and then executing an extended Rout move (off the table and out of the game entirely).

Sunday postscript. Sleeping in my own (warm) bed was certainly nice, but I am definitely sick, so I guess I can soothe my wounded pride with the fact that there was more at play here than just being out of shape and not liking the cold. Small consolation...

Shenandoah Plans part 2

...or lack thereof.

Back on February 16 I posted a quick blurb on plans for the guys to do some hiking in the Shenandoah on a long weekend in early April. Now five weeks have gone by, and I pretty much haven't given this any thought since. Not that I am not excited about it, but it has been a very busy late winter/early spring, and the continued cold and snow stretching into March (we got 5 more inches on March 20) doesn't exactly have me in an outdoors frame of mind yet. But I better get there quickly, because there is almost no time left.

Plans as of now: Leave Thursday early evening in 2 cars (insanity, but I am the only one that seems to think so). Drive almost all the way and stay in a motel. Hiking and campsite Friday. Hiking and campsite Saturday. Short hike and drive home Sunday. In other words, unchanged and with no real added detail since we booked the dates. Others seem to have not had this at top of mind either...

Motel has been booked. Car rental is not needed. Hikes have been thought about a little, but not selected nor determined in terms of which days to do what. Food has not been addressed at all.

Camp Chef Gear

To Be Done: Gear is a personal issue for the most part. As is usual, me and brother Dave will share his 2-man tent. Standard gear doesn't require much thought. But someone needs to play quartermaster, and in recent trips that has been me (ok, so it plays to my anal detail-oriented strengths...you are what you are). I also am a big proponent of the fact that we are a bunch of 50-ish guys who are car-camping and not backpacking, so why not eat well and have some good beverages on hand. So in the coming days, I will bang out a meal plan that will cover Friday lunch and dinner, three meals on Saturday, and Sunday breakfast and trail lunch. None of this should be too tough, but my basic nature makes this lack of prep with little more than a week to go seem...unprepared.

As was the case for our West Virginia trip last year, now that I have a good camp stove and related gear, I will probably aim for the two dinners to be one fresh grilled something and one pre-made frozen "thaw it and warm it up in the pot" kind of dish. But we shall see. Claiming (perhaps presumptuously) the role of camp chef, it will be a matter of pride that we eat well.

So I trust that it will all work out.

The more I type, the more excited I find myself becoming. I do love these trips. In the meantime, I will hope for warmer weather than we have now, and go think about what we might eat...

Shenandoah Plans

Old Rag Mountain

Being deep in the heart of winter (high of 14F today, with an overnight low of -2...and one partly frozen bathroom pipe...), it seems only logical to be dreaming of the warmer days to come, and with that the prospect of getting out on a trail to stretch the legs. The desire to get something on the calendar before schedules become too overloaded has been discussed among the boys recently, and while I was in Texas this week, emails began flying in earnest. The gist of which being that we needed to get something on the books.

Fast forward to today, and four of us have tentative plans in place to do a four day weekend in the Shenandoah valley in early April; basically as soon as the campgrounds open for the year. Exact details are still to be worked out, but just knowing that we have something planned makes me smile.

The others have been to the Shenandoah repeatedly over the years, and this will not be new to them, but the last time I was there with them was...about 1986/1987 to the best of my recollection (as I am 90% sure I was still in college at the time). Either way, it's been a very long time.

In the alternating year big-trip/littler-trip scheme of things, this should be a big-trip year, but one of our gang will be doing a 50th birthday trip to Ireland, rendering another big trip not very feasible. As an alternative, we will be trying to get in 2 or 3 little trips scattered throughout the year. Whatever we can manage is OK with me. Any trip, big or small, is a good trip as far as I am concerned.

As thoughts are being tossed around, the basic framework of the trip is shaping up to be something like this: leave on a Thursday evening after work, driving the 4 hours or so to get to a hotel near the campground and hiking locations. Good hikes Friday and Saturday. Campground Friday and Saturday nights. A briefer Sunday hike, and a 4+ hour drive home. Even if we rent a minivan for maximum gear hauling, this will be a very manageable and cost-effective trip.

Specific hikes being looked at include Old Rag Mountain; one of the famous ones. Old Rag Mountain is an 8 mile hike with 2,500 feet of elevation gain, tremendous vistas, and some good rock scrambling.

More to follow...

A New Years Day Hike

Well, it's 15 hours into 2015 and purely by chance I have taken a step toward addressing a few things I would liked to have done more of in 2014 - I went for a hike and found 5 geocaches along the way.

Ready to set out

Dave texted me yesterday that he and Leo were planning on trying to get in a day hike today somewhere not too far from home and asked if I wanted to go. We didn't have anything specific planned at home, so I said "sure." Within a few hours of that we had a plan to meet at my house at 9:30 this morning and drive an hour down I-95 to Susquehanna State Park in Maryland, where we would have a number of different trail options to choose from to cobble together a 6-8 mile hike, and still be home by 3-ish.

Along the Susquehanna River

After a little New Years Eve celebrating last night and getting to bed at around 1:15am, I was questioning the wisdom of my choice, especially given that the high was only supposed to be around 35 degrees.

Beaver damage

As it turned out, the excessive layering options I brought along weren't necessary, as it was a sunny cold day, but not Arctic by any means. The first 2.5 miles or so were along the banks of the river on an old rails-to-trails trail that was like walking on a sidewalk. The gurgle of the water over the little sections of rapids was peaceful. At one point there were a grove of trees with obvious beaver damage, but they looked older and not very recent.

Giant American Beech

Getting away from the water, the remainder of the hike was on parts of the Deer Creek and Susquehanna Ridge trails, along with some of the connector trails. Plain forest in the winter (with the occasional glimpses of roads and civilization) isn't always the most beautiful kind of hiking, but it was great to get out.

Even bigger White Oak

Highlights of the hike (besides for the river views) were a pair of amazing old specimen trees; a giant American Beech and a 200+ year old White Oak. Gorgeous.

Ridge top river view

When all was said and done, we had covered a fairly leisurely 7.0 miles, found five geocaches including an earthcache, and were back home at my house by 3:30pm. It was a very nice day, and a good start to the new year.

First State National Monument

Sometimes the good guys win.

Near home, my favorite place for a short hike is the Woodlawn Tract, a beautiful 1,100 acre wooded area along the Brandywine River with a few scattered horse farms. Is is bordered on the south by Brandywine Creek State Park, and stretches a little ways into Pennsylvania near Chadds Ford.

Wood lots and farmland

My understanding is that while the Woodlawn Trust (the owners of the property) would seem to be a conservation/wildlife preservation entity, it isn't; it is a real estate holding trust.

Grace hiking the National Monument (who knew?)

The big "uh oh!" came a few years back when a proposal was put forth for a developer to buy a chunk of the Woodlawn Tract and put in 300+ new houses. This of course immediately raised a public outcry, a very visible and active "Save the Valley" campaign, and all the related furor and distress.

Then things got quiet. I figured that things had devolved into a legal battle and/or negotiations over what could and couldn't be done; something likely to take years.

First State Natl Monument and BCSP

Just recently, by accident, I found out why the furor died down (and I can't believe I didn't know this sooner!!). A good encapsulation of the story can be found here, which I will summarize. The short version is that what used to be the Woodlawn Tract is now a national park service unit as part of the First State National Monument.

Apparently, as early as 2011, the Woodlawn Tract, deemed to be in jeopardy, was added to a bill in Congress that would link it to several other historic sites within the state, and be put under the protection of the National Park Service. That bill failed to pass.

A $20 million dollar donation to The Conservation Fund allowed the Woodlawn Tract to be purchased with the intent to include it in a park once it became available for donation at the end of 2012. A new bill was introduced, stalled again, and was in danger of failing (and The Conservation Fund was going to lose rights to the land apparently). With the clock ticking, President Obama (with urging from Delaware's Vice President Biden I'm sure...) signed the bill into law under the Antiquities Act on March 25, 2013, and created the First State National Monument, including the donation of the 1,100 Woodlawn acres to the government, where they reside under the protection of the National Park Service.

It doesn't protect everything in the area, but it does protect woods, fields, farms, and dozens of miles of hiking trails in the path of suburban sprawl.

West Virginia 2014 - Summary and Recap

I am writing this the weekend after the trip, and am still basking in the afterglow of a very successful weekend. Frankly, the trip ended up being better than I expected. We crammed a lot of activity into a short time, and while the amount of driving for what amounted to a 2.5 day trip was a little excessive, I would say it was well worth it. Guidebooks and pictures never do justice to an area until you see it for yourself, and these mountains of West Virginia were very pretty. The hiking was terrific, and we chose hikes that didn't require you to be a mountain goat. Total hiking miles for the trip - 23.2. Not bad.

Hikers, rocks and trees

Car Lessons - At no point in the future, unless there are only three people going, will there be a rental of anything less than a full size minivan. We need the space. Period. Unless we strip the gear lists down to the bare minimum, leaving all creature comfort items at home (such as camp chairs, sleeping pads and air mattresses as well as various other gear), we just won't fit. The point of these trips isn't roughing it. So a big rental.

Seneca Rocks from SW (late afternoon)

Seneca Shadows campground - Excellent, and highly recommended. Not being able to reserve a single tent site was a fortunate break - the group tent site was huge and still cheap. In the future we should investigate this sort of thing as a possibility, as long as there aren't "minimum occupants" requirements that we cannot meet (or we could fib...). The campground itself was clean and well maintained. The shower/privy building was clean and had a great hot water shower. A woman came around in the evenings in a golf cart to check on things and see if we needed more firewood, which was a nice touch. The views from our site were first rate, and the location of the campground in general would make it a good jump off point for adventures anywhere in the area. There are also a couple of adequately stocked back-country general stores within a 10 minute drive to restock necessities like ice, drinks and basic foodstuffs.

Roughing it (not really...)

Gear - My gear is perfectly adequate for this kind of car camping, and there isn't anything I can think of that I really need, although picking up a good quality lightweight windbreaker is on the list of nice-to-haves. My hiking boots are holding up fine, but my low-top Merrills have so many miles on them that they could probably use replacing when I can catch a good sale somewhere. Dave and I have doubled up and slept in his two man tent on all of these trips. If there is one that he doesn't go on, I am either going to need to bum a spare space off a different roommate or buy a tent of my own. I have a one man ultralight backpacking tent, but that is basically a cocoon, and wouldn't be optimal for this sort of camping although it would certainly work in a pinch. So maybe I'll keep an eye out for a two man tent, or go trolling on eBay to see what I can find.

Dolly Sods Wilderness meadows

Camp Kitchen - I enjoy this part of camping and like being the chef, or at least involved in the food aspect, and the new Primus Profile stove seems like a good purchase so far. It really does open up a lot of possibilities for eating like kings in the future. I'm already jotting down ideas for future trips.

Dolly Sods Wilderness vista

Philadelphia Phillies baseball - While we were gone, Jimmy Rollins got a few hits and passed Mike Schmidt, one of my childhood sports heroes, and became the Phillies all time hits leader. That's OK...he won't ever catch him in home runs or RBIs...

Dolly Sods Wilderness mud

Hike - Spruce Knob Huckleberry trail - This was a very nice but not great hike. It was not particularly strenuous, given that we were on the ridge top the whole time, and was a long slow downgrade on the way out and a long gradual uphill on the way back. Most of the time we were hiking in forests with little visibility, and most forests in the Midatlantic and northeast look similar enough. But there was also a decent bit of time in mountain meadows and scrub land where the views were amazing. The view from Spruce Knob was terrific. And the fact that this is National Forest and not National Park land, and therefore geocaches can be placed, is also a plus for me. [I do understand that by staying on the ridge, we limited ourselves from a scenery standpoint, and did not take full advantage of the area.]

Dolly Sods - View to SE from Rocky Ridge trail

Hike - Dolly Sods Wilderness North Circuit - Awesome. Overused word, but this was really really cool. Again, not a killer from an elevation standpoint, which is a huge plus in my opinion, and with tremendously varied and beautiful scenery. The guidebook description of this being a "vistapalooza" was dead on. This was a great hike for putting in miles of great scenery without totally killing the legs and knees and had limitless great photo opportunities. The only thing that could have made this better was being in a season where the berries would have been in bloom. And although bald eagles and black bears live here, we didn't see either. I have seen bald eagles many times, but they are majestic creatures that are a treat to see. I have never seen a bear, and would love to. From a moderate distance preferably...

Dolly Sods Wilderness rocks

Hike - Seneca Rocks - Despite the 1,000 feet of elevation gain, this trail was so well groomed and maintained that it didn't seem bad at all, and could be done by children and families. I would give this high marks given the limited time commitment required (two hours) and the tremendous view from the observation platform at the top of the trail. It fit the bill perfectly for what we needed on Monday, a nice hike to finish off the trip that could be accomplished in about 3 hours or less.

Feeder stream near the Potomac River

Final Verdict - A great trip in a very nice area. Everyone was in agreement that we have barely scratched the surface of what is available here, and would like to return again at some point in the future. Seneca Shadows campground would be a great base camp again.

West Virginia - Monday - Seneca Rocks and Home

6:50am - After a good night's sleep, Dave, Leo and I are up and about and eating breakfast. It feels a little anticlimactic, as the last day of a trip always does. Ted was up at dawn and left for home before 6am. We have a few hours to kill, hoping to be on the road no later than noon, and after sitting in camp looking at Seneca Rocks for a couple of days, this morning we are going to hike it. We will pack and leave when we return.

8:10am - We have driven the 5 minutes it takes to get to the trailhead of the Seneca Rocks trail, and are ready to set off. We are doing hike #44 on page 234 of the Falcon guide Hiking West Virginia. I have gotten good use out of that book on this trip. The hike is a 3.0 mile out-and-back across the western face of the ridge, around to the north side approach, and switchbacking 1,000 feet up to an observation platform near the top of the rock climbing cliffs.

Climber warning - People die here

As it turns out, this is a very popular and well maintained trail that makes going up 1,000 feet about as easy as possible. The trail is extensively switchbacked to minimize the uphill grade, and in the steeper sections has wooden steps in several places. It is a mostly continuous climb, but is very manageable.

Switchbacks

8:52am - We have done the 1.5 miles out and up and arrive at the small cantilevered deck that is the observation platform. It has been a nice hike, as the woods we have gone through are very pretty, and we are on the shady side of the ridge. I am avoiding the sun wherever possible, as I burned myself pretty good yesterday, as did all of us. The view is amazing from up here, and we can see not only our campground in general, but we can actually see our campsite and Leo's tent. In the picture below, our campsite is in the open patch in the woods seen midway between the tips of the two evergreen branches in the foreground, just to the left of the cloud-shaded patch of woods.

View from the top - campground at left distance

Dave and I have collected the information necessary to log an earthcache from various signs on the way up, and find another geocache at the top of the ridge.

Leo and Dave

We sit on the benches and enjoy the view for a while, and take a bunch of pictures, before retracing our steps back down the ridge.

Me and Dave

9:55am - We get back to the bottom, where there is a bridge across the North Fork of the South Branch of the Potomac River. It is a very picturesque spot, and I take a variety of pictures before we do the last few hundred yards back to the car. By 10:00am we are done.

North Fork, South Branch of the Potomac River

Before heading back to break down our campsite, we walk to the Education Center nearby, which is a beautiful new-looking building with a lot of good information and some nice displays. There is a really nice (big) topographic map table that depicts the whole region we have been in (in 3-D), and has the trails we have hiked marked, along with the multitude of other trails in the area. Very cool.

Seneca Rocks hike - 3.0 miles out and back (and up)

10:30am - Back at camp. We packed as much as we could last night, so it only takes us an hour to shower up, finish packing, break down everything and load the SUV. With Ted having taken some of the gear and only three of us riding, we have plenty of room.

11:35am - We are on the road. We wind back out through the mountains the way we came.

1:25pm - We are back on interstate 81 at Winchester VA.

1:45pm - We stop for a Chick-Fil-A lunch (spicy chicken deluxe of course!) as we pass through Martinsburg WV, and get a cache in the parking lot. That makes a final total of 7 for the trip - 6 in West Virginia and 1 in Virginia, including 1 new state and 3 new counties. This brings my total to a modest but respectable 1,107.

5:15pm - After an uneventful drive, I drop Dave and Leo at Dave's house.

5:55pm - Home.

Next...A final trip Recap.