A Day Away - Part 2

♫Shenandoah♫

After our day away in Winchester and our visit to the Museum of Shenandoah Valley last week we decided this week we'd head over to Front Royal, Virginia, "where the Blue Ridge Mountains meet the Shenandoah River" and is the gateway to Shenandoah National Park where Skyline Drive begins.

We parked at Front Royal's town square....

and browsed the several antique/thrift shops on Main Street stopping for lunch at an outdoor cafe. That is Ken waiting for the bill while I go back to the Square to take the above picture of the trees....

Then it was onto Skyline Drive.  You can see it was a hazy day, as it always seems to be when we come.  That clearing on the side of the mountain is where we just drove from to this overlook....

We stopped at the overlooks to the West as we drove South.  That is Massanutten Mountain in the distance....

These next two photos are the same shot using my telephoto lens to zoom in closer....

We only drove as far as Skyland Lodge at the 41.7-mile marker.  The Pollack Dining Room was closed but we were able to get a table in the adjacent Mountain Taproom overlooking the dining room so we could still take in the fantastic view while we ate our chocolate cake and blackberry cobbler with a couple cups of coffee.... 

Then we headed back north stopping at the overlooks on the East side.  There we could still see the results from the Chestnut Blight.... 

It was growing late in the afternoon now and the shadows were long....

I climbed up onto the stone walls to get a better shot and thought about all the men who built this Park in the 1930's as part of the Civilian Conservation Corps of the New Deal.  I'm sure there were folks who thought it was a waste of taxpayer money, but it employed 2.5 million men around the country and millions more are still enjoying the results today....

This particular overlook had some interesting rock formations with trees growing out of them....

The moon was already claiming its spot in the sky....

I couldn't help but take note of the grasses and bushes at my feet when the setting sun lit them so magnificently....

Mary's Rock Tunnel is considered one of the Drive's engineering feats....

You can see why this mountain range is called Blue Ridge....

This names the peaks in the above photo....

This was our last stop at an overlook so I could zoom in on the pond in the valley....