Last December, I took a road trip out west through Arizona and Utah with a good friend of mine. We camped out each night as we made our way from town to town. Our main goal was to see many of the natural wonders the Western US had to offer. We visited several National Parks including Grand Canyon, Zion, and Bryce Canyon. For this trip we bought an annual pass which I hadn’t used since. I decided that it was time to break it out again.
Shenandoah National Park in Virginia is the closest one to me at the moment so it seemed a logical choice plus it’s home to many beautiful waterfalls (one of my favorite things to see, check out some of the other waterfalls I’ve visited here and here). I also wanted to use the time to test out the new camera I just got.
Originally planned to begin on Friday, the weather forecast had it raining all day so I pushed it back to Saturday but I ended up being thankful for the rain as it filled the rivers and falls with ample water flow. Saturday morning as I packed up my car, the weather looked promising and I hit the road hopeful for a good trip. My plan was to camp out in park for the long weekend just like last year.
After I entered the south end of the park, I began stopping at several lookouts along Skyline Drive to take in the views of the valleys below. While the views were nice, my goal was still to see as many waterfalls as I could hike to so I headed for my first destination and parked at the trailhead for Doyles River Falls. The trail leads the Upper and Lower Doyles River Falls and you can eventually reach Jones Falls too. The whole circuit is a few miles and just under 1000 feet of elevation change.
I hit the falls later afternoon, right in golden hour, the perfect time for taking some nice photos. It was the perfect time to play around with my new camera and grab some different shots. I’m still new to the whole photography world so I played around with different shutter speeds to capture the waterfalls in that smooth flow. After a few trials, I hit the sweet spot.
Perhaps I spent too long at the waterfalls because it quickly started to get dark but I decided to head onward to Jones Falls but by the time I reached it, I could barely see and wasn’t able to get any photos. I had to hike back 3 miles in the dark by the light of my phone as the temperature dropped. When I finally made it back to my car, I was freezing. Thankfully I had thermal layers on but it didn’t help my face and fingers.
Now I had to get to the only campground still open this late in the year, Big Meadows. For such a cold night, it was more packed than I had anticipated but I found an open site and got ready to set up for the night. I like to camp out in my hammock to be able to watch the stars. To survive the cold, I simply place a cold weather sleeping bag in it. The one I’m currently using is rated down to 10º F which would be needed as the low was 17º F that night.
I awoke around 4 am to the sound of pounding hooves and realized a deer had just lept over my hammock as it raced across my campsite. The large buck continued to trample through other people’s campsites for the next half hour and I eventually packed up and set out for a sunrise hike along Bearfence Mountain.
If you drive around Shenandoah early in the morning, you’ll be able to see plenty of deer still roaming around from the night before, just don’t stop along any of the roadways as it holds up traffic and the park rangers have no problem letting you know that. If you do see some and would like to look at them, find a place to pull over and walk back towards them but keep plenty of distance for your safety and theirs.
I still had several more falls to see on Sunday and set out to hike them while keeping mind not to slip on some of the ice patches along the steep trails. I managed to hike two more loops on Sunday and see several other falls but all the hiking and elevation changes left my legs pretty sore so I decided to head home mid afternoon Sunday content with all that I had accomplished and excited to rest a little before the next week came around.
