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.)

Evergreen Air & Space Museum (OR vacation part 4)

For our next adventure in Oregon sight-seeing, my dad and I took the boys out to the Evergreen Air & Space Museum in McMinnville, Oregon.

First the Good:

This place is GINORMOUS with an amazing collection of aircraft. It's on par with the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. There are three large buildings that make up the campus - the air museum, the space museum, and the IMAX theater.

Air Museum, IMAX Theater, and Space Museum

In front of the Air Museum

The air museum's central exhibit is the Spruce Goose, Howard Hughes' gargantuan flying boat transport plane that did one test flight near Long Beach, California in 1947 and then never flew again. Around it are dozens of static displays from Wright Brothers' Kitty Hawk and World War I replicas to World War II and onward to present day aircraft.

Panorama just inside the entrance (click on image to enlarge)

One thing I really liked about this museum, aside from the vast number and good condition of the aircraft on display, was the painting and story that went along with each aircraft. Next to each static display was a nice painting of the aircraft in action and a short (1 paragraph) story of the importance of that aircraft in its day and age.

Spitfire - Guardians of the Realm

F-4U Corsair

Messerschmidtt Bf-109

P-38 Lightning

There are several multi-media displays throughout the museum. Each multi-media display area has a row of commercial airliner seats in front of it to sit and watch. For example, the one I took the most interest in was their exhibit on the P-38 Lightnings that shot down Admiral Yamamoto over Bougainville.

They had this mock-up of Yamamoto's crashed plane, with informational panels and with a video monitor in the tail that told the story of the mission to shoot down Yamamoto.

The boys and I sit and watch the video about Yamamoto's demise.

Like any good museum does these days, this museum also has a section with hands-on activities for kids.

Grandpa and YB deliver air-dropped supplies to the mountains.

We thought the FLIR exhibit was so cool, we went back to it a second time to make goofy faces and see how the temperature in our mouths changed when we inhaled and exhaled. (Yes, that is the "geek" alarm you hear going off in the background.)

Space Museum

After a bite to eat (more on that at the end of this post), we headed over to the space museum on the other side of the parking lot. Again, the collection here was pretty impressive, even though there is a big empty spot that they have reserved for a space shuttle to someday call home. I didn't take as many pictures on the space side because I was feeling pressed for time to get home before the afternoon rush hour traffic started. They had nicely done exhibits about the V-1 and V-2 rockets and the space race. I was surprised that my 8 year old son actually sat in the commercial airliner seats and listened to all of President Kennedy's speech about sending men to the moon.

Titan II

The photo above was taken at the ground level. The Titan II actually went down two floors below that. You could take the stairs down and go into the mock-up of the Titan II launch center.

I've seen lots of space capsules on display in museums, but this was the first time to see one with the Sea King helicopter that pulled it out of the sea.

Self portrait with Titan IV

The highlight of the space museum for my boys was finding the escape pod used by R2D2 and C3PO. Okay, no it it's not really the escape pod used in Star Wars, but it sure looked like it to them.

Like the Smithsonian, they have an SR-71 Blackbird at the Evergreen museum. What I enjoyed seeing here that I didn't remember seeing at the Smithsonian was the remote sensing instruments. They had several of the Blackbird's sensor payloads on display next to the plane.

Backtrack to the Air Museum

We went back to the Air Museum because my eldest son really wanted to see the firearms exhibit on the second floor terrace. I was actually glad we went back. It was very well put together. Rather than just a bunch of glass cases with guns on display, they had several static displays of how the weapons were used in action.

Invasion of Normandy

Iwo Jima

San Juan Hill, Spanish-American War

Lewis & Clark Expedition

Alright, you knew this was coming because of the first paragraph heading way back at the top of this post, but it has to be said...

Now for the Bad:

The price of admission to this museum is astronomical. You'll be asked to sacrifice your first born child and take out a home equity loan before you can walk in the door.

Okay, I'm exaggerating just a bit. It's not quite that bad.

My sticker-shock was most likely induced by two factors and aggravated by a third.

First, after paying just $15 for the four of us to get into the Pearson Air Museum a couple of days ago, paying $92 to get into the Evergreen museum left a flaming hole in the back pocket of my blue jeans where my wallet used to be. Oh, and that's with the military discount. Second, coming from the Washington, D.C. area, we can go see the same stuff (except for the Spruce Goose) at the Smithsonian [cue Adam Sandler's voice in Bedtime Stories] for FREEEEEEEE.

My frustration over the smoking hole in the back of my jeans was aggravated by the vacuum they kept trying to stick in the hole as we walked around the museum. They added insult to injury with all the opportunities for you to shell out MORE money as you go through the museum.

Since the Spruce Goose is the main attraction and one of first things you see when you walk in the door, we almost immediately walked over to check it out. We climbed the stairs to go inside. We stepped through the door and found ourselves in a glass box about the size of my bathroom. From this glass box, you could see all the way from the nose cone to the tail cone inside the plane, but you couldn't go up the spiral stairs to see the cockpit / flight deck or walk around at all.

This is your $92 view of the inside of the Spruce Goose

You'd have to be blind to miss the multiple posters advertising having your picture taken in the cockpit... IF you pay for a VIP tour. **Cough, cough.** I'm sorry, but paying $92 at the front door didn't just make me a VIP??? I might be able to accept paying something like the Pearson museum's admission rate and then paying extra for things like going inside the Spruce Goose and the B-17, but to charge that much money at the front door and then expect to nickel and dime us inside the museum is just rude.

Considering the Smithsonian is free, and considering all the other free monuments and museums and things to see and do in DC, you might be better off spending your money on flying to DC than going to visit the Evergreen museum.

Now, there was one mitigating factor on the cost. If we were locals and could come back here on a regular basis, the annual family pass was $120, and that totally would have been worth it. As it was, we ran out of time and didn't get to check out all the exhibits. If you live anywhere near McMinnville, then I recommend buying the annual pass and plan to go spend one outing visiting the air museum and come back another day to see the space museum, and come back whenever you have friends or family come to visit.

A Footnote on Food

There are two places to eat here, a small concession stand in the air museum and the Cosmo Cafe in the space museum. In contrast to the price of admission to the museum, the Cosmo Cafe was very reasonably priced. The service was friendly, prompt, and professional, and the food was extraordinarily fresh and delicious - a hundred times better than the junk they sell in the cafes at the major attractions around Washington, D.C. The kids' meals were $3.50 (and they got a full adult-sized cheeseburger and really good french fries). I paid $7 for a really good reuben sandwich and fries, and that's a better deal than I normally get for lunch at work.

So hey, if you're just passing through McMinnville and looking for a place to eat, you can stop and eat at the Cosmo Cafe without paying admission to the museum. Enjoy the food and the background scenery that lies beyond the ticket counter and continue on your way. :-)

Two happy boys leaving the museum.
(I don't know if you can tell from the photo,
but the driveway is painted like a runway.)