Shenandoah National Park

Our entry to Shenandoah National Park marked the 29th American national park we’ve visited as a family since we informally started tracking visits in 2018. And the additions of Maryland, West Virginia, and Virginia mark 36 states we’ve visited on family road trips. Not too shabby.

We drove into the park on a rainy morning when it was filled with a dense fog and eerily empty of people. We set up camp at the Big Meadows Campground, which positioned us well for adventuring the next few days.

The skies cleared enough by early evening that we were able to make dinner, build a campfire, and walk up the hill to the lodge where (blessedly, as Norah would say) we could access complimentary Wi-Fi when needed.

The next morning, the sun was shining and we took the dogs for a hike up Mary’s Rock, a 4-ish mile moderate hike with a beautiful pay-off at the summit.

The following day was largely a rinse-and-repeat affair, where we did another moderate-ish, 5-mile hike to the summit of Hawksbill Peak. We scrapped plans to do a more difficult and technical hike called Old Rag because nobody was particularly motivated to get up first thing in the morning to get to the trailhead parking lot and I was worried about whether Eli’s soon-to-be replaced hip could manage the boulder scramble without rendering him horizontal for several days.

The dogs seemed particularly happy with our time in Shenandoah, both the quality of their hiking experiences and the quality of the camping meals we always shared with them.