October 11 - 14, 2024 - Lafe and Faith's Odyssey

Virginia(s) and Westward

The next morning, we awoke deep in the forest and made our way back to Gettysburg to make a brief stop at the visitor center to pick up the obligatory postcard. Once acquired, we started driving south and west towards our next destination: Shenandoah National Park. We quickly began to enter more mountainous terrain as we neared the park and decided to make a quick detour through Catoctin Mountain Park, also a part of the National Park Service but not a full National Park, to take in some scenery and a few fall colors. Soon, we arrived to the northern end of Shenandoah and flashed our parks pass to get in without a dime spent. FYI, the American the Beautiful annual pass is $80, and most fee areas range from $15 – $35, with more popular places (e.g. Yosemite, Glacier, Yellowstone) having higher prices. If you’re planning on visiting more than two National Parks, Monuments, etc. in a year, it is definitely worth getting the pass. We stopped at the first visitor center we came across and spent a while learning what the park protected and what we should do there. Shenandoah protects a stretch of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia containing a healthy amount of wilderness area, trails (including the Appalachian Trail), and the Skyline Drive, a road that follows the main ridge of the mountains for 105 miles from one end of the park to the other. This, of course, immediately became our new route, and we started slowly driving up onto the ridge and following it as it meandered up and down and back and forth along the bumpy mountains. The Blue Ridge Mountains are much more reminiscent of the mountains in the western US in their topography but are fully covered in deciduous forest – not something you usually see out west. We took our time stopping at many of the overlooks we passed and eventually made it to a good stopping point for the night. We watched a spectacular sunset over a couple cups of hot chocolate before drifting off to sleep. It was again a pretty chilly night, but it provided for a great sleeping experience.

The next morning, we continued meandering our way along the road, stopped at another visitor center, and pondered what we should do with our day. We didn’t want to zoom through the rest of the park, so we stopped at a pull off, made some lunch, then hopped into our hammock to enjoy the fall sun and breeze. It was a wonderful afternoon activity, and we found ourselves disappointed that we had to get back on the road. Our next destination was another National Park: New River Gorge. The name is a half-misnomer as the river is certainly not new, but the gorge is extremely gorgey. We arrived at one of the park’s two visitor centers just after it closed and consequently decided to drive to a different portion of the park to find something to do and a place to sleep for the night. We ended up at the Grandview area of the park and quickly agreed with its name: it features excellent views of the canyon and the river a thousand feet below as it winds a circuitous route through mountains and hills of West Virginia. After hiking around a bit, we stopped to watch another gorgeous sunset before finding a spot to make dinner and sleep. Thankfully, our only visitors that night were some curious deer.

As the sun began to rise, we quickly drove out to the Turkey Spur Overlook to get a good view of the now cloud-filled gorge as the night’s darkness was from purple to orange by the ascending sun. Once we had had our fill, we drove back to the visitor center we had missed the previous day and stopped in to learn about the park and what we should do. Although helpful, the maps didn’t give us a good plan for what we should spend the day doing. So, we struck up a conversation with one of the rangers, and he provided us with and excellent route that would take us to several other areas we had not planned on visiting. We took his advice and backtracked up the interstate a bit before exiting onto a windy little road through rural West Virginia. The leaves were just about at peak color, and boy was the drive pretty. We soon arrived at the Grist Mill in Babcock State Park, our first stop, and enjoyed the beautiful scenery at what is certainly the most idyllic mill you’ll ever see. The ranger’s route next took us to the second visitor center located on the gorge near to the New River Gorge Bridge, one of the longest single-span arch bridges in the world. We took in the vistas before continuing across the bridge, along the highway, and down into the gorge to the historic town of Thurmond, a once bustling city along the railroad at the bottom of the gorge. The town now features a visitor center and train stop for the occasional passenger trains but is otherwise void of inhabitants. It was a neat stop, but we didn’t stay for long as we had some miles to get behind us. Our next scheduled activity was a family wedding back in western Iowa, so we started heading that way. We slowly passed out of West Virginia and into the, in my estimation, far less beautiful Ohio; Faith and I agreed that West Virginia was the most beautiful of the eastern states we visited this summer and would happily return in the future to explore it more.

Throughout our travels in the east and south, we had seen many signs for Bob Evans restaurants, a chain that neither of us are familiar with. Since we had no more plans in the eastern US, we figured that we should stop at one just to try it. On our drive through Ohio, we spied a sign for “Bob Evans Farms” along with the usual interstate sign for restaurants at the next exit. We elected to stop by and grab a bite to eat. We took the exit ramp and followed a couple signs through the rather tiny little town of Rio Grande, OH before cresting a hill and seeing a plain full of cars, people, and tents: we had stumbled upon the Bob Evans Farm Festival that happens once a year. We, of course, stopped and spent a while poking around the various vendors, exhibits, and activities before entering the original Bob Evans restaurant and getting something to eat. The food was pretty good, better than I expected, and served to give us some energy for the drive ahead. In one fell swoop, we hit a Bob Evans restaurant, the original Bob Evans, the Bob Evans Farms, and the Bob Evans Farm Festival… we decided that was a sufficient speedrun of Bob Evans and don’t need to go back for a while as there’s nowhere higher to go. We got back onto the interstate and continued westward through Ohio and Indiana (terrible roads) into Illinois. The sun had long since set, but we pressed on until we passed Champagne, IL. We were both tired, so we found a rest area and hit the hay pretty quick. The night was cold and windy and the traffic was loud; it wasn’t the best place to sleep, but it worked in a pinch.

I arose early the next morning to keep making progress towards home. We reached Iowa in short order and kept plodding north and west until we reached the town of Maquoketa, where I remarked to Faith that there was a nearby state park with numerous caves. It didn’t occur to me that we should or even could stop there, but Faith piped up with that wonderful idea. A quick detour and a few steps later, and we found ourselves wandering through a beautifully fall-colored forest laid upon hills wherein lied limestone caves ready for spelunking. We mostly kept to the beaten path through the larger caves, and I told Faith about some of the adventures I had had there as a kid. After having our fill of caves, we took a roundabout way back to my parents’ house and surprised them with a much earlier arrival than we had originally planned. We spent the rest of the day working and hanging out with my family before getting to sleep in a warm house as the outside temperature plunged into the upper 20s.