Hiking up OLD RAG Mountain at Shenandoah National Park in Virginia (+ sunset on Skyline Drive)

We have gotten to the fun part, the scramble. We didn't say this hike would be pretty. After spending over a month in Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, we've made it down to Virginia to spend some time with friends for a couple weeks. While we're in this area, we have a couple of adventures planned. And first up we've headed to Shenandoah National Park, which we have been to once before back in April, 2016 to reconquer an old frenemy old rag mountain. So the last time we came to the park, we hiked up old rag mountain and let's just say it was an experience. It was probably the first ever like true mountainous hike we had ever done. And if you know anything about this hike, it has a lot of rock scrambling. And at the time that was just super out of my wheelhouse. And I just felt so nervous and uneasy and hardly enjoyed any of the hike. So now that we're much more experienced hikers and rock scramblers, we're back at old rag mountain to concrete again, but this time have fun while doing it. There are a handful of ways to hike to old rag mountain. We are taking the old rag mountain loop trail, which takes you up the ridge trail, which is where the scrambling is. And then we'll come down the weekly hollow fire road, which is much easier for a total of nine and a half miles in 2,683 feet. We're about 2.8 miles into the trail and the trail so far has mostly been pretty totally wooded with a few occasional peaks out the side. But as you can see here, we have gotten to the fun part, the scramble. I'm 99% sure this gap right here is the part on the hike last time where I first thought, Oh crap, I don't know if I can do this hike. I'm kind of scared. It doesn't look that bad though. So far this hike has been so much easier than I remember, which is good. Way more fun. Like right here? Yep. How do I get down from here? I might need help. It's hard actually, especially not having the world's longest legs. Some of these scrambles so far are pretty tight and kind of tricky, but they are a lot of fun too. My advice so far is bring a smaller backpack than this. We've had to take our backpack off a couple of times. It'd be really hard for kids just or anyone without really long legs and you really need upper body strength, right? My shoulders are sore from like pulling and pushing and Gloves would also be helpful for this hike. My legs are not long enough for this hike. Where do I go? I don't know how 2016 Catherine did this hike because 2021 Catherine is struggling. I think I'm staying here for, I don't know how to get up here. Up here. We didn't say this hike would be pretty. Having fun? Yeah, I am having more fun than last time, but it is, it is honestly, I'm actually shocked that I did this before cause this is pretty hard. We made it. It was way too windy at the top to actually say anything, but the views at the top as well as the last part of the hike are so beautiful. You can see in basically every single direction. The fall colors are still here and now that we've done the hike twice, I will say there were less hard parts from what I remember from last time, but the harder parts were harder than I thought they would be this time. So I don't know if that makes any sense, but overall it's a very challenging hike. You should definitely have a little bit of experience hiking and scrambling, but I had way more fun this time. So from the summit we took the saddle trail to the weekly hollow fire road. This trail is much easier because there's no scrambling involved, but it is a lot less exciting. You could take this trail up and down to old rag mountain, but in our opinion, what makes this hike extra special and fun is the scrambling. The way down was just as much of a slog as I remember it being last time. There are so many other hikes to do here at Shenandoah, but to be honest, old rag wiped us out mentally and physically. So we're going to take it easy the rest of the day and drive part of skyline drive. Skyline drive is a 105 mile road along the crest of the blue Ridge mountains in Shenandoah national park and along the way there are many overlooks and trail heads that you can explore. We don't have time to drive the entire thing, but we're going to drive a 24 mile stretch of it. Similar to the Kankan, New Hampshire, you get to see so many mountain views from so many different angles. You don't even have to do any work. Just push the pedal. We're 99% sure that that Rocky peak back there is old rag mountain. That is so cool to be able to see it from this perspective. Fun fact, Shenandoah was the second national park we ever visited. Our first one was Haleakala on Maui and back then on our first visit, we weren't collecting the patches, but now on our second visit, we finally got our patch. It's pretty cool to think that this was the second we ever visited and now we visited 41 of the national parks. We headed a little further up skyline drive to an overlook that we're going to hang out at until sunset. But while we wait, made ourselves some coffee because for some reason we are just very, very tired today and we have a long drive in the dark tonight and we're going to make ourselves some dinner. There are many, many, many things we love about van life, but one thing that's very, very hard to beat is being able to make coffee, have our bathroom, have our kitchen and then have views like this outside of our window. It's definitely towards the top of the list. Last night we stayed at a harvest host farm called Messick's farm and picked up some goodies to make for dinner tonight. We got some jerk chicken sausage, some sweet potatoes and a couple bell peppers and we just chopped it all up and now cooking it all in one pan. Pretty simple, but should be pretty good. So the spot we came to for sunset is called the point overlook and you can just see the views from the car, from the road, but there's this little pathway that takes you out to a rock. So we're going to go attempt that, but it's very, very busy here. And we have a feeling we might be just going back to see it from the van. Yeah, nevermind. Way too many people. This is actually way better. It was really fun to be back in Shenandoah and there's obviously a ton more to do here, but our focus over the next couple of weeks while we're in this area is to mainly see friends and then squeeze in a little adventures when we can. And we're hoping for our next adventure, we're going to go into Washington DC. Adjective. Let's okay. Let's get out the source. All right. We've used awesome about 20 times today. Great. Seems kind of lame. Um, to say can't use cool. Um, what word? It was really fun. Yeah. Just loosen up for the camera. Loosen up. Windblown look.