End of the parkway

On Tuesday the forecast was again for rain.  We had been lucky this whole trip, staying in front of the rain the whole time, but it seems to have finally caught up to us.  When we got up you could see that it had been raining overnight.  While it was not raining when we started packing the car, it did start drizzling when we hit the road.  We again got up fairly early, we ate breakfast at the hotel and we were out of the hotel by 8:30 again.  We had planned on doing some more hiking today as well as visiting the Natural Bridge and completing the parkway.  We also wanted to get a good start on Skyline Drive, which is essentially a 100 mile extension of the parkway north, through Shenandoah National Park, and we wanted to camp again.  However, since the forecast called for rain pretty much all day we knew our plans would probably change. 

Besides the cheap night in terms of points, one reason we stayed in Lynchburg was because we wanted to go to the Natural Bridge, which happened to be at the same exit from the parkway as Lynchburg.  We knew that if we passed that exit on Monday we would have to backtrack on Tuesday to get there.  So we would start our day there.  First, however, since there was a Chick-Fill-A right next to the hotel, we decided to go there for more breakfast.  Not because we were necessarily hungry, but because we had seen some good chicken and biscuits on their menu.  So we got that.  This restaurant was drive-through only. They had dual drive-throughs and they also had a walk up window.  We had never seen anything like this before.  The Little Ceaser’s pizza next door also was a drive through. There must be lazy people in Lynchburg.  We left Lynchburg and started driving back towards the parkway.  Natural Bridge while it was at the same exit, was 15 miles west of the parkway, while Lynchburg was 20 miles east.  So we had a 35 mile drive to Natural Bridge, up and over the mountain.  We stopped almost right away for gas.  We still had more than a half tank but we couldn’t pass up the $3.39 per gallon.  On the gas buddy app we had seen $3.29 per gallon in Lynchburg was it was in the wrong direction.  We got to the parkway pretty quickly, maybe in 25 minutes, then we started the 15 mile drive to Natural Bridge.  The road had many twists and turns, and was very hilly.  While the speed limit was technically 55 you would have trouble safely maintaining 40.  We were not so lucky.  We had a log truck in front of us.  Now if you’ve ever been stuck behind a heavy truck on a long steep incline with no passing possible, you know they go slow and it can be maddening.   If you’ve ever been behind a heavy truck on a twisty mountain road going downhill, they drive even slower, in their lowest gear which probably doesn’t allow the truck to go faster than about 10 mph.  We have been seen all kinds of trucks in our travels and we’ve been behind them all.  We are pretty sure log trucks are the heaviest trucks out there.  They are probably as heavy or heavier than trucks full of stone of a truck carrying an oversized bulldozer.  In addition to that the logs are usually haphazardly stacked in such a way that you know if they take a turn too fast there will be trees everywhere.  Combine all of those factors and they do not drive very fast.  We can tell you exactly how fast they drive.  8 MPH.  That is what we watched our speedometer do for most of those 15 miles.  For most of the drive we were the second car behind the truck.  The car in front us, a pickup truck, couldn’t take it anymore, and he easily passed the log truck on a blind turn.  He probably had to get us truck up to maybe 20 miles an hour to easily pass him.  We didn’t want to chance it as we did not know those roads.  Chris did consider passing him on the right at one of the few gravel pulloffs they had, but we thought better of it.  Finally, we turned off, about 2 miles before Natural Bridge.

Natural Bridge is a tourist trip in central Virginia just off of I-81.  But it is a cool tourist trap.  It is a geological feature where a creek has carved a path through the rocks over the years (millions of years) and has left a huge gorge, or canyon through the rocks.  The cool part is, at one point a natural bridge has been left behind, so the river, or creek, flows through this really tall tunnel.  What makes this even more interesting, is up on top of that natural rock bridge, which is about 200 feet high and only 80 feet or so wide, US 11 travels right over it.  This place has been a tourist trap forever.  According to Wikipedia, Natural Bridge was one of the wonders of the new world that Europeans visited during the 18th and 19th centuries.  Vacationing guests from all over the world took day trips from Natural Bridge on horseback or horse drawn carriages to explore the countryside.  They even built a hotel there.  To this day there is still a hotel. There is also a zoo, a wax museum, a very large gift shop and right up the road there is a cave of some sort that you can pay money to see.  We only went to Natural Bridge today.  We skipped the zoo and cave and wax museum.  The bridge was really cool.  The pictures we took don’t really do it justice.  We spent some time at this park where they also had an exhibit called Monacan Village, which depicted a Native American village from around the year 1700.  We found a pretty cool geocache hidden in the parking lot as well.  Uncle Tony will like this one.

After leaving Natural Bridge we headed back to the parkway.  We stopped at the James River, which is the lowest point on the parkway at just over 600 feet.  We walked across the river on a pedestrian bridge built under the highway bridge and enjoyed the peacefulness for awhile before heading on.  Besides, it was nice to get out of the rain while we were under the highway bridge.  Like yesterday, we had planned on taking many side trips along the route but the rain was coming down all day long and at times it got VERY foggy.  There were times where you could not see 20 feet in front of the car.  Luckily there were very few cars on the parkway again today. 

We did stop for one more short hike.  There was an exhibit on the side of the parkway on logging railroads that were used in the mountains in the 1800’s. They even had a small section of track still in place.  Chris checked out the builders’ stamp on the side of the train tracks and noticed that they were built in 1881.  We checked out the old logging railroad and then walked up the hill to a small waterfall.  We then went back to the car and started driving again. 

By this time we realized that with all of this rain we would not be driving on Skyline Drive, despite the woman’s advice to Jackie yesterday.  Wednesday’s forecast for Shenandoah National Park was a 90% chance of rain in the park so we would do this another time.  By now it was about 3:30 and we were hungry.  We hadn’t really eaten since breakfast.  We got onto I-64 at Rockfish Gap, which is where the Blue Ridge Parkway ends and Skyline Drive begins.  We noticed what we think were Appalachian Trail thru-hikers (hikers who hike the entire trail, from Georgia to Maine, all in one shot) at Rockfish Gap.  They must not be having fun, walking in the rain with 40 pounds on their back.  We headed for Staunton, VA, where there was a roadfood eatery which sounded good.  When we got to Staunton we noticed that we had already been to this particular restaurant, which was a 50’s style drive up restaurant with car-hop service.  Since we had been there before we opted for something else.  Jackie noticed on foursquare a list of good restaurants in Staunton, or at least one users’ favorite restaurants.  There was a German restaurant, Edelweiss, not too far away so we were there.  The food was great.  Jackie got weinerschnitzel and a little beer.  While the beer was regular sized, next to Chris’s it was little.  Next to Chris’s beer, our pitcher of water was small too.  Chris, besides getting a big German beer, got a combination plate, which included weinerschnitzel, Jagerschnitzel, Sauerbraten, some kind of Goulash, and another dish which we can’t remember what it was called.  We also had all you can eat green beans, red and white cabbages and spaetzle.  We split a pretzel and Bavarian dumplings.  When we were done we were comfortably full and very satisfied.    We then drove to our hotel, which tonight was going to be in Strasburg, VA.