June 4-6

Big Meadow Campground

Skyline Drive

Shenandoah National Park

Friday

I took a half a day vacation on Friday, and we got an early start down the road. Butch decided to take a different route than I-81 all the way down the valley, and we hopped over to Fort Royal, and went down 340. This eliminated one set of mountains for us to haul the behemoth up and over. It was a nice ride. Till we got to the Park and started climbing up the mountains. Thankfully, the speed limit on Skyline drive is only 35 mph-there were times, we weren’t doing much more than that.

When we checked into the campground, the ranger had us read and sign a paper that said we would promise to “DO NOT FEED THE WILDLIFE” in addition, any food that we had outside would be tied up in trees. I’m thinking okay, I’ll not feed the deer, but when she said about the food in the tree thing, it hit me. Damn, that means bears.

blink-blink

Yeppers.

Okay.

Seems a momma and 2 cubs had “taken” two fawns earlier in the week.

sigh, that’s a little too close to nature for me to see.

Ranger Hazel then let us know that we really needed to get a move on it, cause they just had a severe thunderstorm alert just go over the air. We busted our butts down to the campsite, and battened down the hatches before all hell broke loose. Somehow, being at an altitude of 3,535 and having huge thunder and lighting boomers at 4,000 was a bit unnerving, since we were the only camper that was sticking out from under the trees, and we were basically sitting in a big metal box. Yeah, it has rubber wheels on the ground, but it also has 4 hydraulic metal jacks on the ground also. But the storm passed and we made it without any strikes which was a-ok by me.

Saturday

We got up in the morning and hopped on the bikes and headed to the visitor center (it was uphill both ways-I swear!) We went through their display and learned a bunch about the history of the park and how they took it from the people who lived on the mountain. They have a ton of programs that you can do while on Skyline drive. At this time, our only modes of transport are the motorhome, and the bikes, so we really don’t stray very far from the campgrounds. And since we’ve gone there and done the drive in the past that was ok.

There is a restaurant at the visitors center so we went ahead and had lunch there before we made the uphill bike ride to camp.

We went out on a Ranger lead hike late in the afternoon. The hike was up the Appalacian Trail and to a point called Black Rock. We hadn’t gone that far when a group coming towards us warned of a bear on the trail ahead.

blink-blink

oh, jeez

It was the momma bear and 2 cubs.

The cubs were up in the rocks and mom was out prowling around for food (thankfully, only grubs).  We had to wait out that bear as she wandered down and across the trail, and back up and into the rocks again. The pictures of her walking across the trail right in front of us didn’t turn out to good, I figure operator (t)error was the culprit. That and I kept hearing the ranger saying “Sir, sir, you really need to step back behind me-sir?” Oh, yeah, I look up and of course, it’s butch she’s trying to get to listen to her. (see, he doesn’t have the selective hearing with just me) The bear finally got far enough away that we could get by and to say we moved quickly, was an understatement.  I know, I know-oh, it was only a little black bear.

Whatever...it was a freakin bear!!

we hiked on up to the outlook which was really cool, and would have been even better if a storm hadn’t been coming in.

  

Can you tell from the hands on the hips the attitude I'm getting?  This is because I've just told him not to get too close to the edge-for about the hundreth time.  This is the indignant-"I am NOT too close to the edge!" look I got for just looking out for his best interest.  Plus, I can't drive that rig on flat ground much less down the side of the mountains.  I needed him not to fall!

 

Part 2 coming soon

drafter-0.....picnic table-1

me...

bike.....

picnic table-concreted into the ground

equals

 

outside of leg

inside of leg

I barked the skin off the front of my shin, where the dreaded table actually hit me, and it didn't even bruise.  Last night butch says OMG look at your leg, and here you go.  It's a pretty amazing combination of blacks and blues today.  Can't wait for the green phases to show up later in the week.  This all happened Saturday night when we were loading the bikes onto the bike rack (we needed an early start Sunday morning).  I thought I'll just ride up around the front of the motorhome while butch is loading his bike and make sure that I'm in a good gear.  Sometimes I just never learn.  After the picnic table jumped in front of me and caused me to crash into it, I yelled for butch to help me.  He came around and looked at me laying across the seat of the picnic table, with the bike laying on top of me and helped me up, once he stopped laughing.  Thank goodness he didn't think to go get the camera.  The two old queens camped across from us sure got a good laugh.

May 21-23rd

Cadorous State Park

Hanover PA

We took off after work and about 2 hours later were at Codorous State Park near Hanover, Pa. I can see where that place would be packed during the summer. In addition to the big lake they also have quite a pool. We were parked up in the “D” loop which meant we had a nice big camping space, but not much shade. Seeing as it was a field that they turned into campsites. We had a good bit of rain, but fortunately, it was mostly at night.

We did some Geo-caching on our bikes Saturday. Found 3 couldn’t find 2. But one of those had been marked with the incorrect co-ordinates, so in my mind, that’s not a miss.