Day 5 – Exploring White Oak Canyon

Today’s Blog Entry

This was a special day as we celebrated Cindy’s birthday with a trip into Shenandoah National Park. I won’t say how old she is, but when we entered the park at Thornton Gap Cindy was excited to buy her lifetime pass to the National Park system on her first day of eligibility. After that momentous event we headed south about 20 minutes to Skyland, a lodge complex located at the highest point on the Skyline Drive.

There we found the White Oak Canyon trailhead and enjoyed a peaceful 5 mile round-trip hike to the White Oak Falls. This can be a very crowded hike, but thanks to the early morning start, rather cold weather, and early season timing (the Skyland facility was still closed for the winter) we had the falls entirely to ourselves and only saw a few other people on the trail.

We then left the park and headed east to the small town of Sperryville to see what had developed there since our last visit quite a few years ago. Sperryville is home to the triple Michelin Star rated ‘Inn At Little Washington’ where we’ve dined twice before, but in the interest of conserving our retirement funds we had lunch at the somewhat more relaxed Headmaster’s Pub instead!

On Monday morning we got a rather early (and frosty!) start by breaking camp around 8:30 and heading back to Wintergreen.

.

Today’s Map

Today’s Photos