Every year, we try to get out to hike Shenandoah National Park close to the fall foliage peak. We luckily had Sunday wide open this week and made our way up to the park. We stopped at a few pullouts along the way and took in the amazing foliage on the mountains. We chose the Loft Mountain loop for our hike, which we found in our Shenandoah trails book. Kevin and I both thought we had been to Loft Mountain before, but when we arrived, we realized this was a whole part of the park we had never explored. There was a fun wayside with a restaurant and store, as well as really pretty trails. The boards had two hikes listed, but neither were the hike shown in our book, which was about a half mile on the Frazier Discovery Trail and two and a half miles on the AT. We passed several parties on the Discovery Trail, but once we crossed over to the AT, we only came across one other group (and they looked to be AT through-hikers) the whole afternoon. It made for a very peaceful hike with beautiful colors everywhere. The book suggested that there would be two peaks with views of the valley. We found neither, but all agreed it was a fantastic trade-off for the empty trails. We stopped at a few more viewpoints on the way out of the park to get our fill of the wide sweeping park vistas, but were super happy with how the hike turned out:
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| Love that he still asks to hold my hand sometimes |
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| These trails cover land that once belonged to settlers who were cleared off to make room for the park. Signs of their homesteads are everywhere, there, including in these untended apple trees in the woods |
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| Someone finally offered to take a picture for us, although I think I like the selfies better |
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