Wednesday July 9th

Today is a day that we want to make some time and get pretty far into Virginia although we never seem to be able to take off very fast. We dive through the last of North Carolina on I 77 and into Virginia and pick up I 81. 81 pretty much parallels the Blue Ridge Parkway but is not so mountainous…the old bus doesn’t like hills very much. We decide that we need a new mp3 player since Greg dropped his in his soda and fried it! We have a lot of gadgets up front and if one of them had to be sacrificed to the soda gods I guess the mp3 was the best! After checking maps and our time, we found a campsite with availability in Endless Caverns, appropriately named “Endless Caverns RV resort”. That is now our destination. We stop at the good old Wal-Mart for some food supplies, mp3 player and a can opener (I cannot figure out where mine went) and then head to ECRVR. ECRVR is pretty nice. It is the 1st place that we have stayed that was labeled a “resort”. They are working on it, but the sites were beautiful and the host gives you an escort to your site and shows you where everything is. Greg said, “I swear I thought the guy was going to hook up my sewer hose too!” Now that is service. He also gave us a tip on how to see Shenandoah National Park with the time we have. After a quick set up we are off to the park. We are going to do mile markers 32 – 66. The drive is beautiful with many overlooks and little trails you could take to various places. Speed limit -35. This part of the Parkway is called Skyline drive and is the first that was built back in the 1930s. One of the amazing things about SNP is the wildlife. We immediately saw a deer when we started and then continued to see wildlife until our count was 12 deer, 3 bears, 1 bunny and chipmunk in it’s ‘smunk cave! We decide to take a hike…1.5 miles round trip to a waterfall. Sounded good. 1st half of the trip – straight down, last half of the trip – straight up! It was beautiful and we would have never seen the ‘smunk if we haddn’t gone. After we finished skyline drive we headed back to ECRVR by way of a little town of Elkton,Va where you can get some good vittles at the S&C Café for a great price…we seem to be hitting a lot of these places. It was 7:50 pm when we stopped and we were starving! After one of the most beautiful skies at sunset we arrive “home”. We have internet access so we check e-mail (directions from Vicki & Jay to their house!) and make reservations at a Maryland state park close to them, download some pictures and that ends the night. Note: LOTS of fireflies in this area…we have missed them…they make the night magical.