Shenandoah Nat'l Park Hike - Little Stony Man

The first time I went hiking in Shenandoah National Park, I went with my friend Bob to the Rose River Falls loop trail.  We drove the two hours down there, and upon entering the park received a schedule of the day's Park Ranger guided hikes.  It turned out, there was a Park Ranger leading a hike on the Rose River Falls loop trail the same day, but not until later in the afternoon.  I wish I had known that ahead of time, so I made a mental note to myself, "Self, next time, check the schedule in advance and plan your hike to be here for one of the Park Ranger guided hikes."

Fast forward six weeks.  My dad and stepmom are in town visiting from Oregon, so I took a few days of leave to spend time with them this week.  I checked out the schedule ahead of time, and on Thursday, my dad and I went down to SNP to join the Park Ranger guided hike to Little Stony Man.

View from the Parking Lot

(picture doesn't do it justice)

It was an absolutely gorgeous day out.  I couldn't have asked for better weather for the hike.  The sun was out and the visibility across the Shenandoah Valley was extraordinarily good.  Temperature was in the high 70s and it was a bit breezy, but it was nice to keep us cool during our hike.

We met up with Park Ranger Sally, who has a PhD in geology, along with two other hike participants at a view point parking lot, and after some brief introductions we headed out on the Appalachian Trail.  Being a geologist, Sally had a lot to say about the different types of rocks we saw, but she also told us a lot about the plants and animals along the way, too.

Survival Skills Note to Self:  The brown lichens pictures above are called rock tripe.  They are edible and have a calorie content.  File that one away in the "survival skills" back of your noggin.  (No, I didn't try any.)

Self portrait on the AT

Trail Blazes:  Here's something else I learned today.  WHITE trail blazes are ONLY used for the Appalachian Trail in SNP.  BLUE blazes are for hiking trails (not the AT).  YELLOW blazes are horse trails.  RED blazes mean you're leaving the park, turn around!

Mountain Laurel

We saw a ton of Mountain Laurel everywhere we went on our hike, and it was beautiful. 

Purple-Flowering Raspberry

Wild Strawberry

Stony Man looking up to the sky

Park Ranger Sally had a lot of laminated information pages and annotated pictures in her backpack to help explain things to us along the way.

Talking with some thru-hikers

Thru-Hikers are people who are trying to hike the entire length of the Appalachian Trail in one season.  This is right about the time they pass through SNP, so we encountered several on the trail and stopped to talk with a few.  These guys left Georgia on April 3rd and had hiked 900 miles by the time we crossed paths with them on June 10th.

My dad and me on the AT

Evidence of Bears

Several hikers told us they had seen bears that day.  Along the way, the Park Ranger pointed out a couple of indications that a bear had been there recently.  In the photo above, she pointed out that it was fresh indication that a bear had been ripping up this dead tree to eat the bugs inside.  We also saw where a bear had recently removed a rock from alongside the path to eat some sort of a bug nest under the rock.

What's that in there?

Can you see it?

The Park Ranger told us that 60% of bears in SNP den up in trees, and pointed out this bear den in a tree.  The two black spots on the tree in the middle of the picture are gaping holes in the top of the tree where the bears climb in and out. 

In spite of all this, we never did see any bears.  We did see a ~3 foot snake that bolted into the brush before I could grab my camera.  We also saw a lot of tiger swallowtail butterflies, but they wouldn't stay still long enough for me to get a decent picture, either. 

Evidence of Civilian Conservation Corps

We saw evidence of the projects done by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression, such as the retaining wall in the first picture above and the remnant of the old emergency telephone system that ran along Skyline Drive.  The post on the right is one of those things I would have just walked on past if I had been hiking this alone without a knowledgeable guide to teach us about what we saw along the way.

My dad and me under the Stony Man's nose

Self portrait under Stony Man's nose

Hike Stats

It certainly wasn't a very long hike, but that's okay.  It was a beautiful day and a nice hike, and I learned a lot from Park Ranger Sally.

After we finished the hike, we headed to the Skyland Lodge for lunch.  We scored an awesome table by the windows overlooking the Shenandoah Valley.  This was my second time eating here, and both times I have been very pleased with the quality of the food and the service, not to mention the stunning scenery.  

They use local produce here, to include local blackberry ice cream pie. :-9  I highly recommend it!  (Oh, and I recommend sharing - one slice is definitely big enough for two people.)

I'm very pleased with the two hikes I've done in SNP so far, and there are still several more hikes I would like to do.

In the Skyland gift shop, I picked up two new books: 

Wildflowers in Color: A Field Guide to More Than 250 Wildflowers of Eastern North America.  In case you haven't figured out by now, I really enjoy taking pictures of flowers on the trail.  I'm not very good at identifying them though.  I have searched a few book stores for a field guide to flowers I see, but haven't been happy with anything I found until now.  This book is compact and easy to use.  It has two big color photos of flowers on each page with a short text description of each.

I've also been on the lookout for a good reference for day hikes in SNP.  I ordered one off the internet and wasn't very happy with what I got.  It was compact but not very user friendly or informative.  While in the Skyland gift shop, I thumbed through the half-dozen different hiking guides they had on the shelf, and I thought this one was the best balance of compactness versus content.  It has very good maps and descriptions of the hikes, and it has a pretty long list of hikes to choose from.  This was one of those cases where I was glad to put "eyes on target" and choose which one I wanted instead of just ordering something that sounded good off the internet.

Paddle Log #12: Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge

On Friday of Spring Break, the boys and I got up at the crack of dawn and headed to the Florida space coast to go kayaking.

It was the first time I had seen the sunrise in seven days.
(Since the last time I went to work the previous Friday.)

Before we went to Florida, I googled kayak rentals and guided tours for Florida and came up with several listings. It's hard to tell if one is better than another, so I started searching other websites like BBB and Yelp for reviews.

I found that this group, A Day Away Kayak Tours, had one positive review on Yelp (not a lot of data, but it's better than nothing), a good rating on BBB, and a good website. I called them once for information and another time to reserve the trip, and both times I was very pleased with how friendly and informative it was speaking with them on the phone.

Their website is well laid out and very informative. I really like how they have basic stats for each trip they offer: length of time, comfort level, difficulty level, recommended gear to bring, etc. The photos of kids on the trip help reinforce that it's doable with small children, too.

My boys (8 and 6 years old) and I went on the Merritt Island Tour / Manatee Tour. Note there are two listings for those tours on their website, but it's the same tour. They just call it the Manatee Tour in the spring and summer when the Manatees are around, but both tours go to the same place in the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge.

I seriously considered taking our kayak with us to Florida. I decided against it because:

• As a general rule, I don't want to go kayaking alone (just me and the boys) in a new place with which I am not familiar, so we planned to pay for a guided tour anyway.
• ADAKT said they had a couple of nice kayaks that would fit all three of us.
• It would've saved us a few bucks to have our own kayak instead of using theirs, but I think we would have made up for that in gas mileage from having the kayak on top of the car for the drive down.
• Since ADAKT had the kayaks that would fit the three of us, it was a lot less hassle this way. We just showed up and they already had the kayaks on the beach ready for us to hop in and go. Likewise, when we got back, it was easy for us to hop in the car and leave without having to load-up the kayak on our car.

Thumbs-up / Kudos to the ADAKT staff for their advice with regard to directions. They specifically warned me DO NOT FOLLOW YOUR GPS DIRECTIONS, follow the directions they send you in your reservation confirmation email. They were absolutely right. My GPS wanted me to go all sorts of bass-ackwards directions that would've taken me FAR FAR away from where I wanted to be. The directions they provide are simple and easy to follow and get you directly there.

The tour was scheduled to start at 9:30 a.m., and they recommended leaving at least an hour and a half early from Orlando to beat the traffic. Just to be safe, we left our resort near Sea World in Orlando at 7:30 a.m. We got to Titusville way early, but that's okay. I had just thrown the boys in the car in their PJs, so we stopped at McDs in Titusville to change into swim trunks and swim shirts and get some coffee. We also stopped at the Walgreens to burn some time, then got in the car to head on over.

We WOULD have been right on time...

Except there's a draw bridge...

And it was OPEN...

So we had to wait...

And we were a little late.


Even so, the tour guides weren't overly annoyed with us.


When we arrived, the kayaks were all on the beach ready to hop-in and go, and tour guide Elisabeth was giving some basic paddling instruction to the group. She didn't wait for us because she knew we owned our own kayak and this wasn't our first time paddling.


We rode in a nice RTM kayak with two hard plastic seats and a jumpseat-cushion for my youngest son in the middle. Back when we were shopping for our own kayak, I shied away from the kayaks with plastic seats like that thinking they would be hard and uncomfortable. On the contrary, they were very comfortable and we didn't have any problems in the two hours or so of paddling we did.

We had a great time. The boys loved it. We saw several dolphins, one alligator, lots of pelicans and other birds, and Florida striped tulip conch snails.

SQUIRREL?!?! DOLPHIN?!?!

It's a challenge to get a good photo of the dolphins because they pop up and go back down again so quickly, so you can't really zoom in and capture them in time. Even so, we thought it was really cool seeing so many dolphins so close by.

There were about 12 kayaks or so in our group, most with 2 people in the kayak except for ours with 3 and the three tour guides riding solo. The lead tour guide, Elisabeth, rode at the front. Tour guide Travis rode at the back making sure we didn't leave anyone behind. Tour guide Kristi rode in the middle and was very helpful in pointing things out to my boys.


We paddled in around a boat basin looking for manatees, but we didn't find any. Our tour guide said it had been an unusually cold winter and it was still early in the season for seeing manatees.

We DID see the eyes and snout of one gator close to shore. Our tour guide said there was nothing to worry about, the gator wouldn't come near us and the only time we would encounter an aggressive gator was during nesting season.

(Pregnant pause)

One of our fellow paddlers who also had never been in the same body of water in close proximity to a live alligator asked, "So when's nesting season?"

Our tour guide thought for a moment and answered, "Oh... right about now actually."

Cue Finding Nemo sound bite of Bruce the Shark:

SWIM-A-WAAAAAAY!
[back-paddle, back-paddle, back-paddle]

No, in all seriousness, I felt completely safe. We did see the gator move a little, so we knew it was alive, but it didn't move toward us at all. I didn't get a very good photo of it, but I wasn't planning on going any closer for a photo.


We paddled underneath that draw bridge that delayed our arrival and out to the end of the canal. Then we got out to stretch our legs and walk around a bit.

YB shuffling his feet to scare away stingrays.

This is becoming a tradition of sorts for our family vacations, except my wife stayed back at the resort to relax, so we're missing her feet in this picture. In case you didn't know, Crocs are great for kayaking. I'm still loving my Keen Newport sandals.

Wait, what's that?

Closer up underwater shot

We saw several of these Florida banded tulip conchs.

It's a type of sea snail. If you pick one of these little shells up, something similar to a cow-tongue comes out of the shell and with the strength of an Arnold Schwarzenegger bicep pushes itself out of your fingers so it falls back in the water. It looked about twice as large as the shell itself and I was amazed how strong it was. It doesn't take long to figure out just how to hold them so the snail can't reach you to push out of your fingers though.

YB didn't want to hold it.

Neither did ES.
(I love his facial expression here.)

I was very pleased with our experience with A Day Away Kayak Tours, and I would recommend them to friends. The boys both said they had a good time, too and even agreed to having their photo taken with me by the ADAKT sign.

Some stats for the paddle log:

• Date: 2 April 2010
• Time In: 10:00 a.m. (approx)
  
• Time Out: 12:00 p.m. (approx)
  
• Elapsed: 2 hours
• Mileage: 3.0 miles by Buckeye Outdoors route planner
  
• Sea State: 0
• Winds: 0
• Air Temp: ~85F
• Water Temp: Bathtub
• Current: None
• Kit: RTM rental kayak and simple rental paddle. Flop hat & sunglasses. Forgot gloves. Forgot to put sun screen on arms. Short sleeve swim shirt, swim trunks, Keen Newport water sandals.
• Configuration: I sat in the back seat, ES in the front, YB in the middle.
• Route: See Garmin Connect. I forgot to push "start" when we got in the water, but our entry point is the same place as where we got out at the "stop" icon.
  
• Other comments (such as wildlife spotted): Several dolphins, one alligator, lots of pelicans and other birds, Florida banded tulip conchs.
  

P.S. LUNCH

On our way back, we stopped at Dixie Crossroads in Titusville for lunch. That place is awesome!

2 Dozen Rock Shrimp & Corn Fritters covered in powdered sugar

I don't want to make this blog post any longer, but if you've got a moment, I recommend reading my Yelp review of Dixie Crossroads. It could be a blog post in and of itself. (I uploaded several photos there, too.)