Josh and I have been wanting to go camping for a while now. We used to go camping at the beach and we camped for tickets through college, but we hadn't been camping since we got married until last weekend. This was also the first time we've been camping with just the two of us. Well, we had Bailey, but as far as humans go, it was just the two of us. We had such a great time!
Just a warning - This is a picture heavy post.
We took a half day on Friday and drove down to
Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. We got there around 3:00 and found our camp site at Big Meadows campground. They had your typical small camp sites and others that you had to walk up to. These were a little more secluded, so we went that route.
This is a regular, drive up campsite. If you look closely, there are 5-6 deer hanging out right around it!
This is the path to our campsite. It's not a far walk from the car, but far enough off so that you have a little more privacy. The deer were EVERYWHERE! You can't see any in the picture, and unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of them at all, but there are also chipmunks all over the place! I started walking into the woods and I heard sort of a chirping sound. I assumed it was birds, but it didn't take long to see all the little chipmunks running around. They are pretty much the cutest animals ever! Bailey tried to chase them of course, so a lot of them went into hiding once we came in.
The deer are not afraid of people...or dogs for that matter. A few of them are tagged with a GPS attached to them, this one is F2. Bailey tried to chase this one, but F2 just didn't care. She stood her ground and just looked at Bailey like she was crazy.
Once we got our tent put up, we drove out to the grocery store to pick up dinner. In hindsight, we should have gone before, but the campsites were first come first serve and we wanted to make sure we had a place to sleep! There were plenty when we got there. Haha.
On the way back in from the grocery store, we saw this buck just grazing on the side of the road.
We got back to our camp site and Josh worked on building the camp fire while I prepared dinner. We had steaks, baked potatoes and scallops. It was really good, but next time I think we'll keep it a little more simple.
After dinner, we played Scrabble by the camp fire. Bailey wasn't really into it.
...or maybe she was just trying to hint that she was ready for bed?
After scrabble, we had s'mores and got ready for bed.
Bailey wasn't really a fan of being in the tent, but she finally warmed up to it and settled down. I didn't sleep the greatest. Bailey did wake us up with her quite bark several times during the night, so that woke me up, the deer rustling through the woods right beside our tent woke me up, twice during the night, I heard Bailey's water bowl being moved around, so that woke me up. (I was convinced it was a bear, so that kept me up for a little bit). I woke up cold twice and just from being uncomfortable a couple times. So, with all that, I think I probably woke up every hour. It turns out, the water bowl was in pretty much the same spot we left it, so a bear didn't pick it up and play with it right outside our tent like it sounded. It was just a deer pushing it around. Haha.
We woke up around 7 to pack up and get ready.
Bailey was ready to go!
Bailey didn't eat dinner and she didn't want to eat her breakfast either. She was too interested in her surroundings. I knew we were going to be hiking for about 7 miles, so I wanted to make sure she had something. I had this treat left from a
BarkBox, so she got that. I was already warming water for Josh's coffee and my tea, so I mixed it in with warm water for her. It was kind of like a broth.
This is our breakfast. I chopped potatoes, sausage, onions and peppers the night before. I threw it in foil packets with some Montreal Steak seasoning and threw it in the fire to cook. This way, I just had to throw it in the fire long enough to heat through in the morning. I'm SO glad I thought to do that, it saved us lots of time. Our goal was to be on the trail by 10:00. If we had to wait for the potatoes to cook through, that wouldn't have happened!
We packed up and drove to the parking area at the start of our trail. Josh didn't want to take such a long hike at first, but I talked him into a 7.4 mile trail. It lead to camp Hoover, where president Hoover spent lots of time and had one of the highest mountain views in the park. I was really excited about this trail!
It started off on the Appalachian trail.
We saw lots of pretty fungus.
Bailey wore her backpack so she could carry her own things. We took turns carrying our backpack and Bailey.
At this point on the trail, probably 2 miles in, we realized we probably weren't on the right trail...we kept going anyway.
And we found this! It was a beautiful view!
And this waterfall.
We decided to speed-hike back so we could still have time to hike the original trail we thought we were hiking.
Bailey was our little porter. She carried her stuff and my hoodie when I got warm.
We got back to the parking area and realized the sign at the beginning of the trail giving us information about our trail was very misleading. It had no information about the trail we actually hiked, even though that was the trail right behind the sign. We were supposed to walk across the street to find the beginning of our trail. There was NO signage on the trail to tell us we weren't on the right trail. Oh well.
So...we started on the other trail.
We saw this really cool fallen tree.
Nice, pretty falls. There were lots of these along the trail.
Hubby! He tried to get Bailey to crawl up on this rock with him...she wasn't having it!
More pretty fungus on this trail too!
This is probably about halfway to camp Hoover.
That is president Hoover's cabin.
A little stream runs through the camp, right next to the cabins.
I have no clue what this is, but it looked cool.
An outdoor fireplace. Wouldn't it be awesome to have s'mores here?
I loved the little bridges throughout the camps.
We decided to have lunch on president Hoover's porch. It was so nice! We had sandwiches, cheese and banana bread. We gave Bailey a few treats as a snack.
By the time we finished lunch, it was about 2:30 or 3:00. We were about 2 miles in. It would have been nice to hike the whole loop, but we still had over 5 miles to go. It was starting to cool off and we knew it would get dark before we had time to finish. We decided to head back the way we came. At the end of the day, we had hiked around 10 miles. Nice!
We were just about to hop in the car when a lady came up to us to pet Bailey. She said her friend was there too and she had a dog that looked just like her. We went over to meet him.
Which one is Bailey? Haha.
Bailey was howling at him here. She does that when she's excited. :-)
After they sniffed each other and played a little bit, we hopped in the car to head home. Literally as soon as we got in the car, it started to sprinkle a little bit. PERFECT timing!
Bailey was asleep before we pulled out of the parking lot.
We decided to stop at one of the overlooks on the way out to take in the beautiful views one more time.
We made it quick, because it was COLD!
We had an amazing trip and we definitely want to camp again. We plan to try to go a couple times next year. It was so nice to just get away from everything for a little bit.
