Some Scenic Drives

We left Winchester, Virginia after breakfast on Saturday, headed for Shenandoah National Park and the scenic Skyline Drive. Finding it turned out to be a little difficult. The AI “Ask Maps” function seemed to work just fine; it provided a detailed itinerary. However, as soon as we turned on the automatic navigation, the map reverted to sending us down the freeway. Finally, we reverted to the pre-AI behavior and just asked it for the entrance to the park, instead of the entire itinerary. That worked to get us started.

As we drove through the town of Front Royal we saw banners advertising the “Festival of the Leaves”, taking place on the second Saturday of October. Since this was only the first Saturday, the leaves were not yet in all of their glory. However, the leaves had started to turn, and the scenery was still beautiful. Skyline Drive is 105 miles long. It starts in the town of Front Royal and goes south to Pigeon Gap, and the town of Waynesboro, where we planned to spend the night. The speed limit is 35 mph, and so, with stops to enjoy the scenery, the drive took us a little more than five hours.

I mentioned earlier the problems we had with Google Maps. Every time we asked it to take us down Skyline Drive, it routed us to a different highway, eventually getting us on the right road half-way through the park. Apparently that happens to a lot of people. At about the half-way point on our drive, we came to the Thornton Gap entrance station and the park was suddenly filled with cars, clogging all of the pullouts, and parking for some distance on the narrow shoulder. Ten miles further on, we found ourselves mostly alone again. 

We took quite a few pictures with our phones, but none of them really did the scenery justice.

Kathy really liked the trees that turned red, while I liked the yellow ones better. Even though the fall colors hadn’t fully arrived, the changed leaves seemed almost fluorescent. If the sun had been out, they would have been even more spectacular.

At the Neighbor Mountain trailhead, we parked our car and walked a little ways into the woods, hiking a short way up the Appalachian Trail. In 2022, when we took our Northeast road trip, we hiked a couple of miles on the trail in Connecticut. This time we were satisfied with a couple hundred yards. 

Inside the forest, the trees seemed even brighter. Here is a picture of the canopy from the section of the trail that we walked.

As we got near the end of the drive, there were more open overlooks like this. They were really impressive, but I wish it had been clearer.

We got to Waynesboro at 2:30 PM, checked into our hotel, and went looking for dinner which we found at the Fishin’ Pig. Kathy had pulled pork, and I had a shrimp po’boy. We were really hungry, and the food was very good. 

As I mentioned in another blog post, I originally planned for two sights or activities each day. My plan for Saturday was to drive through Shenandoah National Park, and then visit Jefferson’s Monticello and take a tour. Since we didn’t finish lunch until almost 4:00 PM, this turned out to be just too ambitious, so we decided to skip the Monticello tour, and turn in early.

Sunday on the Blue Ridge Parkway

Sunday morning dawned rainy and windy, the remanent of the post tropical cyclone Isaias. Back home, in Southern California, they were getting rain and flooding on the Balboa Peninsula, courtesy of Hurricane Rachel. Today’s plan was to pick up where we left off yesterday, and to drive the first 200 miles of the Blue Ridge Parkway.

We drove on the freeway to the point where Skyline Drive ends, and picked up the Blue Ridge Parkway at Rockfish Gap, a few miles from Waynesboro. Even with the rain, the scenery was still striking. After driving about 40 minutes, we came to a tree that had fallen across the road. I got out to see if I could move it, and I couldn’t.

Just as we were turning around to go back, up drove a ranger in a small pickup. In the front seat he had an electric chainsaw. In ten minutes he had one lane cleared, and we were on our way again.

Well, for the next fifteen minutes or so, until we came to the next fallen tree. This one was smaller, and I thought that I could move it myself. I threw some branches over the edge, and tried to shift the main trunk. I couldn’t move it at all. Its root-ball was tightly stuck in the mud.

As we sat in the car, trying to decide what to do, a group of four motorcyclists (two couples) arrived and tried to move it together. They couldn’t move it either. However, there was enough room for them to get by on their bikes, so they took off down the road.

While we were turning our car around, another (larger) pickup truck appeared driven by a middle-aged fellow with his son. He assured us that it would be no trouble to move the tree with a strap connected to his trailer hitch. He drove his truck over the tree, hooked up the strap, and moved the tree.

However, just as he was finishing up, the motorcycle group returned, and told us that the road got progressively worse. We all turned around, went back to Rockfish Gap, and caught the freeway down to Hillsville, Virginia. Weren’t we surprised when we found the four motorcyclists staying at our hotel.

Monday on the Blue Ridge Parkway

Monday morning was cloudy but windy, with the sun shining through. If all went well, today we’d tackle the second half of the Blue Ridge Parkway, from Hillsville, Virginia to Asheville, North Carolina. At breakfast, we talked to the cyclists, who were also heading down to Asheville. They said that the road was clear, and showed us how to check for road closures on the National Park Service web site. I checked and everything looked OK. Kathy and I drove the few miles to Fancy Gap, Virginia, headed south.

Of course, after 20 minutes of driving, what should we find? An even bigger tree fallen across the road, of course. And, of course, I couldn’t move it.

Fortunately we had a couple of bars on our phones and were able to use Google Maps to navigate to the next access point, further south: Cumberland Knob. This meant that we missed the Appalachian Music Center, though. We talked to a ranger and he told us that the road was open to the south.

The Blue Ridge Parkway meanders along the top of the Blue Ridge Mountains, with expansive vistas on both sides. Unlike Skyline Drive, the speed is 45 mph, although I usually drove much slower. This is the view towards Mount Airy granite quarry, the largest in the United States.

Looking on the other side of the ridge, to the west, you could see small farms and forests.

One of our stops was the Brinegar Cabin, built in 1886 by Martin and Caroline Brinegar. The 125-acre farm contained livestock, gardens, and an apple orchard. For extra income, Martin made and repaired shoes and Caroline wove and created clothing items. Although now owned by the National Park Service, the Brinegar children visit every year.

While the Brinegars were exemplars of the middle class Appalachian life, a few miles to the south, the Moses H. Cone Estate showed how the other half (of one percent) lived. Cone was a wealthy textile magnate during the same time that Martin and Caroline were working their farm. The 23-room Flat Top Manor was the centerpiece of his 3,500-acre estate overlooking Bass Lake. As far as Carolina estates go, Flat Top was second only to the Biltmore’s. 

We watched a couple of short movies about the Cones and Flat Top Manor, but didn’t wait around for a ranger-led house tour. It was already around 2:00 PM, and we were both pretty hungry. Yesterday, we’d planned for this by getting a Subway sandwich, only to be driven from the mountain by the forces of nature. Today, all we had was some string cheese, diet cola, and Sun Chips. 

Soon after, we went through one of the tunnels, and immediately found the road closed, still being repaired from damage caused by Hurricane Helene, two years ago in 2024. Driving down the mountain on a road twistier than the Blue Ridge Parkway, we were stopped several times for crews repairing mudslides and landslides. 

We finally made it to Asheville, North Carolina at 4:00 PM. The downtown traffic was pretty terrible. We checked into our hotel, got some pizza, and turned in. Tomorrow (Tuesday) we’ll leave the scenic mountains and head for the coast at Charleston, South Carolina.

Ohio, Maryland & Virginia

On Tuesday morning we left our hotel in Marietta, Ohio, and headed for Tom and Beth Gross’ house in Catonsville, Maryland. Tom is Kathy’s youngest and only surviving brother. Instead of taking the scenic, two-lane routes, at almost eight hours, we took the freeways, and got there in five. As usual, our first stop was Trader Joe’s, where Kathy was thrilled to find not only the Maryland bag, but bags for Virginia and Delaware as well. That just saved us a Trader Joe’s stop in Virginia.

Beth had dinner for us, spaghetti with chicken and home-made pesto. Tom and Beth’s daughter, Zoe, and her partner Dylan came over, and we visited with them until Tom came home after 7:00 PM. Tom had spent the afternoon showing his old boat to a buyer who flew in from Florida. He was pretty happy, since it looks like he made the sale. 

On Wednesday morning, after breakfast, we went to work with Tom. He and Beth own Fireside Stone and Patio in Ellicott City, right on historic Fredrick Road. As Tom drove us to the shop, he stopped every few minutes to show us another historic marker. This one, almost directly across the street from their house, commemorates the Catonsville Nine, a group of Catholic antiwar activists who burned draft files to protest the Vietnam War in 1968.

A few miles down the road, we visited Tom and Beth’s shop and met their employees. Their shop sells all kinds of fireplaces and wood stoves, which they install. They also do various kinds of stone work. In addition to the retail shop on Frederick Road, they rent a large warehouse to store their inventory. 

A few blocks down the street is the Baltimore and Ohio Ellicott City Station Museum, a free museum which celebrates the first train station in the United States. Here’s Kathy in the reconstructed women’s waiting room. (Men and women had separate waiting rooms. They don’t explain why.)

Although steam-powered locomotives had been successfully deployed in England, none had yet been used in the United States. The original Baltimore & Ohio line used horses to pull the carriages. The owners of the B&O line felt that because of the tight curves on this particular route, the heavier English locomotives would not work. So, Peter Cooper, in 1829, built an upright steam engine specifically for the Baltimore to Ellicott City route, which was eventually named “Tom Thumb”.  

At lunch, Beth met us at the Georgia Grace Cafe, a Greek restaurant where Kathy had spanakopita and a Greek salad, while I had the beef souvlaki, which was great. In the evening, our other niece, Adde, came over to the house. It was great to see her.

On Friday, Tom arranged for an all-day boat ride to the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake, with our nephew Daniel Jue, his wife Wendy, and their children Jonathan, Christopher, and Mia. Tom has a great, 28-foot cruiser, with two giant Yamaha outboards. 

We left from Sandy Point State Park. The weather was beautiful, and we all had a great ride, especially little Mia.

Our destination was the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michaels, Maryland. On the way over, we took the scenic route through the Kent Narrows, which took about two hours. On the way back, we took the main channel, and it took about an hour and a half.  It’s a little faster to go by car, but what’s the fun in that.

Kathy and I got a picture in front of the old light house.

We all spent a couple hours looking at the museum exhibits, and Kathy decided to climb the narrow steps to the top of the lighthouse.

Once she did it, everyone else wanted to see the view. Here is Daniel and Mia with the fresnel lens at the very top.

And here is Kathy and Beth looking out over the bay. Tom had a yearly pass, and so we all got in for free.

After touring the museum, we walked into town for lunch. The town is filled with original houses from 17th and 18th centuries. This is the Snuggery, the first house built in St. Michaels, in 1665, when it was just a two-room log cabin. Today, it is a B&B. 

We got back to Catonsville after 8:00 PM. It was a rewarding, but tiring day. On Friday morning, we took leave of Beth and Tom around 10:00 AM, setting out for Harpers Ferry, and then Winchester, Virginia, using scenic, two-lane roads. Both of us agree that it was a terrific, uncrowded, drive.  One of the stranger things we saw on the drive was the Civil War Correspondents’ Memorial Arch, which was kind of in the middle of nowhere. 

We finally made it to Harpers Ferry National Historic Monument, which is at the intersection of West Virginia, Virginia, and Maryland. We thought that we would eat in the historic old town, but parking was impossible. Since both of us had visited the park before, we decided to push on to Winchester, and have lunch there. After our late lunch we were able to check into our hotel, and lounged around the rest of the day. Tomorrow, Saturday, we are heading south to Waynesboro, VA traveling down Skyline Drive, which runs 105 miles through Shenandoah National Park.

Indiana, Ohio & West Virginia

On Sunday, we left Wabash, Indiana after breakfast, heading for Canton, Ohio. Our first stop was the Trader Joe’s at Fort Wayne. To make sure we weren’t disappointed, Kathy called ahead first, and found that they did, indeed, have the special Indiana shopping bags.

Leaving Fort Wayne, we headed for Canton, Ohio on the 2-lane  “Old Lincoln Highway”. This route took us through small rural towns, past flat corn fields as far as we could see, and, finally through the rolling hills and farms of western Ohio. One interesting thing we saw was a number of small cemeteries, popping up in the middle of a corn field or beside the road, with no church or other buildings anywhere near.

Finally, in Upper Sandusky, construction on the original Lincoln Highway detoured us back onto the divided highway. We stopped for a quick lunch at a Subway, and got to our hotel around 3:30 in the afternoon. At 5:00, we met with Kathy’s aunt Joann and her uncle Tom for a wonderful dinner at Olive Garden, catching up with their lives.

On Monday, we got up a little earlier, and left by 8:30 AM. Our goal was to drive down the Ohio River Scenic Byway, from East Liverpool to Marietta, Ohio. It was divided highway to East Liverpool, where we turned off onto 2-lane scenic Ohio Highway 7, going south. 

Halfway there, we decided to take a detour. We crossed the river at Wheeling, West Virginia, and drove the east side of the river (on West Virginia Highway 2) until just before Marietta, Ohio. This was a smaller road, and it was really interesting. 

This section of the road contains Ohio’s only National Forest, The Wayne National Forest. Despite that, the Ohio River is highly industrialized, and the basin is considered one of the most highly polluted in the United States. We drove by several decommissioned coal-fired power plants, with giant machines tearing down the smokestacks. Despite the quasi-apocalyptic vibe, the drive was still fascinating.

Before we crossed back into Ohio, we stopped in Moundsville, West Virgina, at the Perkins Restaurant and Bakery for lunch. It was great comfort food.

Kathy had the grilled fish dinner with asparagus and broccoli, while I had turkey, stuffing, gravy, garlic mashed potatoes, buttered corn and cranberry sauce. Everything was delicious. With drinks and a good tip, the total was $44. Such a deal.

We crossed back into Ohio for the last stretch and arrived at our hotel around 3:30 PM. Tomorrow, we head to Catonsville, Maryland, where we’ll stay with Kathy’s brother Tom, and his family, for a few days.

Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois & Indiana

On Thursday morning we ate the buffet breakfast at our hotel, left Red Wing, Minnesota, and hit the road. Our destination was Dubuque, Iowa. Unfortunately, when you give Google Maps your destination, it gets you there by the most expedient route. Before this trip I had researched the Great River Road, a scenic route that follows the Mississippi River from its headwaters to the Gulf of Mexico. 

On the Minnesota side, this is Highway 61, and on the Wisconsin side it is Highway 35. We wanted to go down the Wisconsin side, so we “short-circuited” Google Maps by putting in the first stop in Wisconsin, and when we got there, we put in our final destination.

We got to Stockholm, Wisconsin (218 residents), the home of the Stockholm Pie Company, widely regarded as the world’s best pie shop, by 9:00 AM. The quant little country store didn’t open until 10:00 AM, so we didn’t stick around. We did stop in Pepin, Wisconsin, the birthplace of Laura Ingalls Wilder, and the setting for her first book, Little House in the Big Woods.

The driving was wonderful; a curving, two-lane road, hugging the banks of the Mississippi, with almost no traffic. Everyone else was using their computerized navigation, clogging up the interstates, while we had the scenic route almost to ourselves. If you have the chance to drive it, we highly recommend it. 

In the small river town of Onalaska, we stopped for lunch. I had the local special, Muskie. It was more than I could eat. Those are two separate 12” long fillets in the picture.

Once we crossed the river into Iowa, we drove through mile after mile of corn fields that were brown and dry.

Kathy thought that maybe the actual corn had already been harvested, but neither of us could figure out how they could harvest the corn, yet leave the stalks still standing. So, we pulled over to the side of the road, walked into the corn fields, and found that the ears of corn were still on the stalk.

Our hotel in Dubuque, the Iowa port on the Mississippi, was the Redstone Inn, a historic 1894 building turned into a B&B. The owner, Robert, had moved here from Mission Viejo and bought the property in 2008.

The building itself is striking both inside and out. The bathrooms have been modernized, but it was a lot different than the Hampton Inn. I had a hard time sleeping, because it felt kind of Adams Famliyish to me. Kathy slept just fine, though.

On Friday, Robert made us breakfast in the dining room, which was nice, china settings and all. Then, we loaded up our car and headed for our next stop, Springfield, Illinois.

Before turning east to Springfield, we drove south to Coralville, Iowa, to visit the Trader Joe’s, and to pick up the Iowa version of the Traders Joe’s bag. Unfortunately, they didn’t have an Iowa Trader Joe’s bag. Bummer.  

Driving from Iowa, through Illinois, toward Springfield, was similar to driving through Iowa. The land was pretty flat, there was corn in every direction, and, skipping the interstate, we had almost no traffic as we rolled through the small rural towns. Our “sight” on Friday was to visit Abraham Lincoln’s home.

This is the only home that Abraham and Mary Lincoln owned. After their death, their son Robert inherited it. He then gave it to the United States government, with the provision that it should be cared for, and that it should always be free to tour. And, the only way you can see it is to take a tour.

We got there at 2:30, which is exactly when the next tour was scheduled. A ranger walked us through the house and talked about each of the rooms; which items are originals and which are replicas. The tour takes about an hour. After the tour, Kathy and I walked around the four-block neighborhood of restored 19-century houses, which are being used for National Park Service offices.   

This time we did stay at a Hampton Inn, and went out to a local restaurant, the Chesapeake Seafood House for dinner. It was 5:30 and the large parking lot was almost filled. Inside it seemed like most people were senior citizens, so we fit right in. Maybe the younger people eat later. Kathy had a hankering for clam chowder and I got some fried clams. Very good, and very large portions. With an appetizer and drinks, dinner was under $50, including the tip. Everything really is cheaper outside of California. 

Friday night I slept great; no haunted house vibes, and I didn’t wake up until 6:30 AM. Hampton Inn has a great breakfast buffet, so we didn’t get on the road until almost 8:00 AM. Google Maps has a new AI feature, called “Ask Maps”, so I decided to try it out. My prompt: “We want to go to Wabash Indiana by the most scenic route, avoiding highways as much as possible.” 

It went really well. It planned out three routes and it was great. Again, we traveled on almost empty, two-lane state roads. The total time on our journey was only an extra half hour. (However, every time you stop, you have to do it again, or it will route you back to the interstates and state freeways.)

When we left Springfield, our tank was half empty. The local gas stations were all about $4.69 a gallon. While that seems ridiculously cheap to those of us from California, we had gotten used to paying around $4.20 in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Minnesota, and Iowa. We asked Google. It said that gas was much cheaper in Indiana. It was. Where we filled up, we saw this sign in front of the local high school announcing “JV Volleyball at Judah Christian 8:00”. Judah Christian Gilbert is our son’s name.

Outside of Lafayette, near Perdue University, we stopped for lunch at Christos Grill, which appears to be a local chain. I had a pork cutlet sandwich (think German schnitzel) and soup, while Kathy had a tuna melt and steamed broccoli. The portions were ample, the food was delicious, and the bill, including tip, was $30. We got to Wabash around 5:00 PM. Wabash is in the Eastern Time Zone, so we gained an hour going from Springfield. We’re staying at a Hampton Inn again tonight; we should probably sign up for their loyalty program. Look out the window of our room; endless corn fields.

Tomorrow is Sunday and we’ll be driving to Canton, Ohio, to visit Kathy’s aunt Joann.