My mom had recently started working for the federal government after returning from a couple of years of service in the U.S. We drove the Skyline Drive as part of a week-long trip where Jason and I planned a route that took us through numerous National Park Units through the Virginias, D.C., Maryland and Pennsylvania. To date, this has been one of the most underrated experiences in the parks that I have had. We drew our route so that we could drive through Shenandoah National Park’s beautiful Skyline Drive. Please forgive typos and incomplete thoughts)Īfter spending a couple of days in Charlottesville, VA (awesome!), we took a day to meander to visit my mom at her D.C. (Note: Rules for this challenge include writing, unfiltered, on the topic for no more than one hour. Skyline Drive is open year-round, so visitors can enjoy the scenery and the trip in any weather.#NatureWritingChallenge Topic: An underrated experience at a National Park, refuge or National Forest. In the winter months, visitors can go backcountry camping, snowshoeing, and hiking to see frozen waterfalls. In the summer months, visitors can hike, relax at Skyland Resort, take a leisurely drive along Skyline Drive, camp, go horseback riding, see some of the park's many waterfalls, attend many Ranger-led hikes and programs, check out the interactive exhibits at the Byrd Visitor Center at Big Meadows (Mile 51 along Skyline Drive), and visit many of the park's historic buildings. During this time, bears, filling up on nuts and berries for the winter, are a common sight in the trees. Hundreds of thousands of visitors travel the Drive each year, with peak visitation during the changing leaves in the autumn.
#MAP OF SKYLINE DRIVE MANUAL#
They performed hard manual labor building roads, bridges,ĭams, parks, and other public works projects, including re-grading Skylineĭrive, planting trees and shrubs (including the popular mountain laurel), fixing drainage, and building low walls and overlooks along the Drive Inġ933, during the Great Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt created theĬivilian Conservation Corps, an agency that provided jobs to young, single,Īble-bodied men. Run Gap, passed adjacent to Skyland Resort, which became a concessionaire of the park. The initial stretch of the Drive, from Thornton Gap to Swift Many visitors began making shorter stays of a few weeks and ultimately to a fewĭrive began in 1931.
But asĪutomobiles became more common and roads to the park became more accessible, Resort required trekking up dangerous, unpaved mountain roads. Initially, Skyland’s visitors stayed for months at a time, as access to the Wealthy families who sought to escape the heat of Washington, D.C.’s summers,Īnd he rewarded them with fancy bonfires, pageants, balls, and parties. Miner or businessman, Pollock was a successful showman. Mountain, and Skyland Resort soon became a reality. Mines in the late 1890s, he decided to build a mountain resort near Stony Man When George Freeman Pollock visited one of his failed copper Rocky mountain trails to haul supplies and materials into the mountains via
Before Skyline Drive wasīuilt in the 1930s, settlers who made their homes in the mountains used narrow, Ridge Mountains, from Front Royal to Charlottesville.
Skyline Drive is a 105 mile road that winds north-south through Virginia’s Blue
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