Day 10-Shenandoah National Park

 Monday, May 12

Travel day; we drove 267 miles today crossing Virginia to the Blue Ridge Mountains.  We were on the road by 8:30 AM and two hours later we on Skyline Drive in the Shenandoah National Park.  

The forecast for today wasn't good, cloudy skies and rain, so we weren't anticipating any good views along Skyline drive.  Clear views without haze are certainly a rarity for this park.  The sun never came out but our views were much better than expected, and we certainly appreciated the various hues of green in the vegetation.   The elevation along Skyline Drive is between 2000-3600 feet, so spring comes much later than sea level.  Our previous visits to this park have been in April when there are almost no leaves; just gray like late November in New Hampshire.

 A scarlet tanager

Deer are everywhere, so you need to pay close attention while driving

We exited Skyline Drive at the Luray exit and headed to New Market to visit a Civil War battlefield and museum.  The first museum, the New Market Battlefield Museum, is privately owned and in addition to lots of Civil War artifacts and photographs, and it includes items from the French Indian War to Vietnam.  The docent said this collection has taken decades to put together.  

Looks like the Parthenon

This museum also had a room dedicated to toy western guns.  Toy replicas of the pistols and rifles of Hopalong Cassidy, Gene Autrey, and the Lone Ranger were just a few of the hundreds on display.  

Joni couldn't resist taking a photo of me with the Lone Ranger and Tonto who I saw at a rodeo at Madison Square Garden when I was six or seven years old.  When I shared this personal history the docent did not seem impressed.

Leaving this museum we then drove just a short distance down the road to the Virginia Museum of the Civil War.  This museum only focused on the battle and included the Emmy winning film, Field of Lost Shoes.  The film focuses on the experience of several cadets from Virginia Military Institute who ended up fighting in this battle.  The title of the film comes from the fact that the battlefield was so muddy that it sucked the shoes right off the feet of many of the soldiers.

The Shenandoah River Valley was a critical north/south thoroughfare to Richmond.  The Union forces were commanded by  General Franz Sigel, not one of Grants favorites,  and the Confederates by John C. Breckinridge, the former US Vice President.  There were over 10,000 soldiers involved in this battle and 1,300 casualties between the two forces.  The Confederates were successful in driving the Union back over the Shenandoah River and halting, at least temporarily, their march to Richmond.

Robert E. Lee and Traveller...interestingly at Gettysburg the equestrian statues with the horses lifting one foot off the ground indicate the rider died in combat.

Leaving the battlefield just after 5 pm, we headed for Front Royal for dinner.  Nothing fancy for us tonight; just cheese burgers, fries, diet coke, and frozen custard, but it was good.

Our final drive for the day was a short one to the Shenandoah River State Park Campground where we arrived around 7 pm.