Shenandoah National Park (9/24)

Today we are going to take the Shenandoah Skyline Drive through the park.  It is 105 miles through the whole park.  We don't plan on driving the whole thing just about a 1/3 of it.  The scenery is breathtaking.  There are over 500 miles of hiking trails, 105 miles of scenic roadway, and 75 overlooks.  It was nice to have the overlooks, it lets you see how high you are and how far you have come.  Waynesboro is so small from the lookouts.

The colors are really beautiful.  They haven't fully changed but enough to get a good feel for how beautiful they will be in a few weeks.  It is pretty cold out in the low 50's and very windy and cloudy.

We stopped at Loft Mountain gift shop and restaurant. We both had a hamburger and fries.  For a little snack bar it was really good.  I bought me a can of Virginia peanuts.  I don't know how they cook their peanuts, but they are not oily and are really good.
After lunch we head to the nearest exit and back towards Waynesboro.  We have to stop for groceries on the way to the park.  It was nice to get back to the fifth wheel, it was starting to get really cloudy and rain was on it's way and temps were dropping.
Sat back and relaxed and watched a movie and went to bed.  Another great day!!!!

Appalachian Trail (9/23)

We are in n no hurry to get going this morning.  It was a long weekend and a long drive here.  Joe sleeps to almost 9 am.  Once up we finally get going.  We are excited to do some hiking today. We have not been able to hike for some time.  We drive to the Skyline Drive in the Shenandoah National Park.  We don't go very far just to the beginning of it where there is a parking place and a opening to the Appalachian trail.

We walk across the bridge and up the road a little ways then we are on the trail.  You see the trail marker which is just a white stripe on a tree no other signs to direct you.  There were some rangers where we parked and they told us what to look for.

We start up hill for a ways then it levels out.  It is so peaceful in here.  We have decided we would hike until 1 pm then turn around and come back.  There is really no destination to hike to unless you are doing one of the long all day hikes or are a thru hiker.
As we are hiking I see what Joe has always said about this trail. there are no views, all you see is the trail and the trees.  Once in awhile you can manage a small view.

Can you pick the view out.  It is really hard to see.






Here are some pictures of the trail.

 Joe picked up a hitch hiker on the trail.  This was the weirdest caterpillar I have ever seen.  If you click on the picture it will enlarge.

We did about 6 miles round trip, it was nice way to get back into hiking.  We are hoping to at least get one more day of hiking in, if the weather cooperates.
Once we get on the I 64 we see it was a mistake, traffic is backed way up and at a complete stop.  We find out that there was a car fire about 2 miles up the road.  Luckily it wasn't to long of a wait, about 20 min. then we were on our way again.  I am tired but feel really good and content, it was a great day.

Waynesboro VA (9/22)

We are on the road by 6:30 this morning, it is a long way to Waynesboro VA.  It is still dark and we are taking all the back roads until we get to Columbus OH then we get on the interstate.  I am so tired this morning I am having trouble staying awake.  As the sky starts to lighten up we see we are in some rush hour traffic.  Luckily for us most of it is going the other way.
This is what the sky looks like as day breaks.  It is cloudy like this all day.


It really is a nice drive through the country.

                                                        A little bit of fall color and the sky line of Columbus. 

We didn't get to see much of Columbus as we took the by pass around it.  The out skirts were very nice.  Now it is across the bridge into West Virginia for a little bit then into Virginia.

       Again the scenery is beautiful all through this part of the country.  Nice old farms with great old red barns.  Some great old brick houses too, and some fall color starting to come through.

 The house to the right is on this little pond and is quite beautiful, I could live there, if only it didn't rain so much!!!!!!!!

We are finally in Waynesboro, we go to the Waynesboro North 340 RV park. This is a nice quite 

park in the woods.  Our new alarm clock is the giant acorns falling on the roof of the fifth wheel.  At first we didn't know what was making the racket but it didn't take us long to figure it our.                     Tomorrow we will do a little hiking on the Appalachian Trail.                                                                   

Sunday, round 3 racing at Eldora (09/21)

It rained all night, every time I woke up it was thundering and raining, not sure what to expect today.  It is not raining when we get up, this is good, but it is very windy and cold.  The track opens at 10 and hot laps start at 12.  We drive over to Bob Evans for breakfast then off to the races.  This time there was plenty of parking.  We get to our seats and then walk around for a little bit.  They have their t-shirts on sale so we get a few of them.  Then they announce that the B main is getting ready to start.  Again the clouds are moving in hopefully it won't rain again.


There are a lot of crashes in the B main, I have never seen so many flips and roll overs.  Some times 3 and 4 cars at a time.  Daytime racing is a whole different story.  The track is already slippery and black slick.  It is so dusty you can hardly see the cars go into turn one.





 Again it is announced the a storm cell is heading our way.  By this time we only have two races left and manage to get them in with no rain.  The Silver Crown sprints and quite a bit bigger than the normal non winged sprint.  I really enjoyed watching them race, they have bigger motors and you can feel their power as they speed by.  I also noticed that when the crash they don't flip, or so I thought we did see two of then do a easy roll.  A lot easier to watch than the hard flips and rolls of the smaller sprints.  As soon as the checked flag was thrown we were on our way.
It is now after 5 and we need to be ready to leave very early tomorrow morning.  We stop at Kroger's Grocery store for gas and dinner.  Once home we eat and get things ready.  Early to be early to rise.  But for me another sleepless night, just couldn't relax!!!!!  Still thinking about the races.  We need to be up by 5 am.  Oh well  I will manage.

Night two at Eldora (09/20)

Today it is really cold and windy.  It is not suppose to rain but it sure looks like it might.  We drive into downtown Wapakoneta looking for someplace to eat.  We ended up at a bakery/coffee shop cafe. The food was good.  Then we walked around town some.  This is a nice small town, maybe a little to small for me but not bad.  Great old buildings, some have been re-purposed and others and just closed.  It would be nice if they could revitalize it.

There are some beautiful old churches and old houses.

 This house is the painted lady, it is an apt building now!

Now it is time to head back to the park but first we stopped at the Neil Armstrong Air and Space Museum.  This is Neil Armstrong's home town.  He went to high school here.  We have been to the US Space and Rocket center in Huntsville AL so thought we would see what this one was about.  It was fun reliving man's first steps on the moon.  We were amazed by how many of the astronauts come from OHIO.  

This meteorite comes form AZ

Well it is time to head to the races, we stop in the little town of Celina for dinner then off we go.  We get here a lot earlier but the parking lot is full.  We have to park across the street and pay to park!!!!

The weather is not looking good and we know that a big cell of rain is headed our way, just hope it waits until after the races.                                                                                                                           

The races are off to a good start, the midgets are so fun to watch, Rico Abreu is racing in this class also and like last night he flips it again.  Dove down to pass another car and shot up right into the wall and takes 5 others with him.  Two other flip besides him. That took out half of the field.  The rest of the race went pretty smooth and very dusty.  We make it through all the heats races and are starting on the B main when almost everyone gets up and starts to leave, it doesn't take long for us to see why.  It starts to pour an there is a lot of lighting an thunder.  Luckily our seats are under the roof so we are not getting wet.  It is a long delay and finally they bring out the push trucks to pack the track and get the water off, this doesn't last long because it starts raining again.  We waited until 11 pm then went to the truck and waited another 30 minutes and called it a night.  The race was not canceled until after 1 am.  I am so glad we did not stick around.  They will finish the race on Sunday afternoon.