DC & Shenandoah National Park

At the end of July we took a short trip up to Washington DC for David's team lead's retirement party, and decided to add on a couple of weekend days to do a road trip to Shenandoah National Park and the surrounding area.

We flew in early on a Saturday morning, picked up a rental car from DCA, and hit the road heading west. Our first stop was for lunch in Strasburg, which has a small cute strip of shops downtown. We ate at the Box Office Brewery, a historic one-screen movie theatre that was converted into a brewpub. It was a neat little space and it's cool to see examples of historic preservation like this.

The weather was sunny in the morning.

Craft beer in an old converted cinema!

Despite proclaiming it impossible to eat this much food, David did, in fact, eat all those nachos.

It was raining after lunch and unfortunately would be like this all afternoon.

Originally, we had planned on spending two days hiking and exploring parts of Shenandoah National Park, but on the first day just went to a couple of viewpoints and didn't do any hiking due to the rain. Still, we got some cool views thanks to the thunderstorms moving across the valley. 

Thunderstorms made for a rough first day in Virginia.

Pretty views though!

Instead, we drove back north out of the park and walked around downtown Front Royal, where luckily the rain had already passed. Front Royal has a small but cute downtown that was not very busy. We stopped into a couple of shops, and then went to the Virginia Beer Museum, which is a small free museum in a converted house that also sells craft beer that you can walk around in the museum while enjoying.

After the beer museum, we headed back to the hotel to regroup. We decided to take a drive around to some nearby towns to nab some new counties for David's map and ended up finding a gem of a town in Winchester, VA. We stopped by the Patsy Cline House right at sunset and saw a new park they were building to connect to a river trail nearby. We also went to downtown and were really amazed at how well it was maintained. There is an entire multi-block pedestrian area with shops, restaurants and museums. Definitely worth a stop.

Downtown Front Royal is cute, but pretty quiet.

David in a comic book shop in Front Royal.

Everyone loves Front Royal!

The Virginia Beer Museum had some interesting stuff in an old house.

Patsy Cline's childhood home in Winchester, VA.

New park and trail system in Winchester.

Downtown Winchester was a wholly unexpected delight.

European style dining in Virginia.

Lots of historic buildings to boot.

The next day was our main national park day. Unfortunately, it was very hot and humid, but that's still better than rain. Shenandoah National Park follows the ridge of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia for about 100 miles focused on Skyline Drive. There are lots of viewpoints, small to medium hikes and visitor centers to check out along the way. We did not go the entire length of the park, only going about half way in total.

From Front Royal, we drove south into the park, stopping at a few viewpoints before parking to hike the Stony Man Summit trail. While the park was not very crowded, this trail area was pretty busy. From there we went further down to Dark Hollow Falls trail, which is a good hike downhill to a waterfall that you will then regret when you walk uphill the entire rest of the way back. 😉

After hiking, we stopped by the Visitor Center at the Big Meadow to take in the exhibits and grab some food. There was a long line for hot food, so we just got a couple quick grab sandwiches and snacks and ate on a picnic table outside. 

Welcome to Shenandoah! The first national park that was pretty much entirely automobile-focused.

It was warm and humid but also very lush and pretty.

Yay for better weather!

Stony Man Trail summit

Dark Hollow Falls

David at the Harry F. Byrd Sr. Visitor Center at the Big Meadow.

Spotted lanternflies were very common. They're invasive so smashing them on site is recommended.

Heading back to DC!

From here, we started our couple hour trek back to DC through some small towns and countryside in central Virginia. We stopped along the way at a farm/market with frozen custard (yum!) and goats! Closer to DC we also stopped at Manassas/Bull Run to visit the historic battlefield park.

Dinner that evening was with one of David's Final Fantasy friends Nick (Pithus) at an Italian restaurant in Arlington. It's always nice to meet video game friends in real life. It turns out Nick's wife (Jessie) even went to the same high school as David in Georgia! Small world! After dinner, we returned the rental car and headed to our hotel in Navy Yard (near David's office), despite not having to go into the office (since we're here for a party and on annual leave). 

Yay! Custard.

And goats!

Manassas National Battlefield Park

There's a ton of Civil War stuff in this corner of Virginia.

David walking to dinner in Arlington.

Dinner with Nick (Pithus)

The next day (a Monday) we played DC tourists, which is a bit of a novelty for us since we both have been to DC dozens of times and Paul has lived here for a few months on two separate occasions. Most of our trips to the capital in the past ten years have been only for work, so it was fun to do some touristy things. We started the morning by meeting David's colleagues for breakfast at Maman (a great coffee shop and bakery) then made our way to the Asian Art Museum on the mall. It was, unfortunately, still very hot our entire time in DC so getting around was often sticky and strolling through the city for fun was a no-go.

After the museum we split up for lunch. David meeting colleagues in Navy Yard and Paul meeting up with a friend at the Museum of the American Indian. After lunch, Paul continued his museum stroll by visiting the National Botanical Gardens and the Hirshorn Museum. David took a brief siesta and then we met up at the Museum of Natural History for a quick stroll before walking north for a cocktail at the very neat Allegory. From there we met up with our friends Gretchen and Tom at Doi Moi for dinner followed by a cookie at Milk Bar.

The peacock room at the National Museum of Asian Art.

Drawing representing the burning of Tokyo.

Smithsonian Castle.

A photo at the National Museum of the American Indian.

Corpse flower at the Botanical Gardens. We missed the bloom by a few days!

Inside the gardens.

An exhibit at the Hirshorn.

A neat painting at the Hirshorn.

Main lobby of the Museum of Natural History

An exhibit on cellphones at the Museum of Natural History.

Allegory had some really interesting wall art.

David and his cocktail.

The menu at Allegory was apparently shocking to Paul

Paul's curry noodle soup at Doi Moi.

The next day most of the time was dedicated to retirement celebrations for David's retiring team lead. We started the morning at Maman (again)! David met with some of his colleagues and Paul invited one of his as well. After hanging out for a couple hours then returning to the hotel, it was almost time to make our way to the planned lunch at Purple Patch near Columbia Heights. Purple patch is a great and delicious Filipino restaurant that was also nice enough to accommodate our party of approximately 15 with no fee! After a long lunch we parted ways with colleagues and strolled around the neighborhood briefly (it was so hot)! We stopped at a coffee shop/bookstore and then made our way back to the hotel to hang out before the retirement happy hour planned by David's Office Director in Navy Yard. Paul also planned a happy hour with a couple DC colleagues at the same location... that way he could say hi and meet some of David's people but still network and say hi to some of his DC people!

After the happy hour ended (way longer than an hour) we grabbed some to-go food from Takorea and wrapped up the day at the hotel.

Paul's fried chicken and ube waffles at Purple Patch.

David's adobo chicken!

The man of the hour! Congrats, Mike!

Lunch with colleagues at the Purple Patch.

David, Suraiya and Mary Kay.

Happy hour later that evening with more folks!

Our flight home to Atlanta was scheduled for the mid-afternoon on our last day, so we hit up Maman (yep, once more) with some colleagues before going to the National Gallery of Art for a couple of hours and making our way to the airport. All-in-all a really great trip to Virginia and DC filled with warm fuzzy feelings for great colleagues (departed and remaining), friends, as well as some time at Shenandoah National Park and cool DC bars, restaurants and museums. DC is a really great place to visit, which is sometimes hard to remember as we're here for work so often you forget to look around from time to time!

There was a special exhibit on historic animal drawings.

Inside the underground connector in the National Museum of Art.

The main hall of the National Museum of Art.

July 4th in the Blue Ridge Mountains

We decided to take make a 4-day weekend of the July 4th holiday and rent a cabin just over the GA-NC border in Murphy. David planned some activities on the way and some hikes while up in the mountains. We grilled out, watched fireworks, explored some north Georgia and North Carolina mountain towns and generally just relaxed for a few days.

On the way up to the cabin we stopped at Falls Branch Falls. The road from the west was actually a pretty long dirt road, which wasn't great, but it was just a short hike to the waterfall and it was pretty busy with lots of families. On the way to Blue Ridge, GA we made one more stop to hike Long Branch Trail - which was a short couple mile loop trail through the woods nearby. 

In Blue Ridge, we wandered around downtown, which is mostly cute but does have the occasional confederate flag loving store (hashtag ruralgeorgia). We got lunch at a little Italian place that doubles as a market then went on a ride on the Blue Ridge Scenic Railway. This train makes the journey from Blue Ridge to McCaysville and back a couple times per day. You can go on a longer 4 hour tour that includes time to stop in McCaysville and have lunch, but we opted for the shorter 2 hour ride that just goes out and back. It's a pretty ride, and there are multiple classes of cabin that range from essentially sitting outside to an air conditioned (child free) cabin. 

Falls Branch Falls. Stupid name, nice waterfall.

Aww, I see two happy bears! 😉

Blue Ridge Scenic Railway!

Paul's on a train!

Views from the train.

Leaving Blue Ridge, we stopped by the grocery store and headed up to the cabin for the evening. Paul grilled some hamburgers and we just enjoyed the views and relaxed.

Can't beat this view from our cabin!

The main room of our cabin.

Sunset drinks on the balcony.

The next morning (July 4th) we decided to do the big hike of the trip up Chunky Gal trail to Boteler Peak. This hike was a bit of a challenge. We're pretty used to long-ish hikes when we go out west, but aren't as accustomed to them on the east coast. It was pretty warm, very humid and there were a lot of overgrown segments of the trail with thorns. Mid-way up the trail we ran into a man on his way down who warned us about copperheads and thorns. There was also quite a lot of bear scat on the route, which added to the anxiety. When we got to the top, one of the side paths to the north facing viewpoint was so overgrown we didn't bother. We did have some nice views south towards Lake Chatuge. Overall, we'd not recommend this hike in the summer months as it's not well enough maintained due to overgrowth with thorns. Paul was the trailblazer for most of this hike and was pretty scratched up by the time we got down.

Chunky Gal certainly is a unique trail name.

One of the first overgrown parts - it got much worse than this. Thorns and ticks were concerns.

Paul on the trail.

Views while crossing a powerline easement.

Nice view from the top.

David at the top.

After we got back to the car, snake bite free and unmauled by local bears, we drove back down to Georgia to grab lunch in Hiawassee and visit the Bell Mountain overlook. David had seen TikToks about the viewpoint and it did not disappoint. Oddly, people decided to start graffitiing the rocks here which was kinda interesting but also overall a detraction from the natural setting.

Pizza always hits after a long hike.

View from the overlook.

Spray painted rocks.

From Bell Mountain we went back to our cabin to shower and relax. There were some thunderstorms along the way and a huge one blew over the cabin a bit after we arrived - which was pretty cool to watch. After the storm, there was lots of mist coming off the mountains and a thick layer of fog by the next morning. We were also treated to several fireworks displays from residents in nearby communities as well as the city of Murphy's official fireworks display, which was due north of our back porch.

Here comes the rain!

Misty sunset mountains.

Fourth of July display.

The next morning we set off to Leatherwood Falls for a quick hike and look-around. This was a very popular area with lots of people playing in the stream and picnicking, but we had the hike all to ourselves. It was a short loop hike through the woods with some nice stream views. We then drove down to Murphy to explore the little town a bit and grab lunch, before taking a siesta at the cabin. Murphy is a cute town with some nice restaurants and antique shops. There's also a confluence of two rivers and a riverwalk to explore. Just north of the city is a Harrah's casino. We popped in for 15 minutes, lost $60 on the Wheel of Fortune (a family favorite) and then left.

Clouds in the valley in the morning.

People enjoying Leatherwood Falls.

David on the trail.

Quick stop at the casino!

Downtown Murphy.

 

All I see are three friendly bigfeet enjoying a day out on the town in Murphy.

Beer flight at lunch.

An old rail bridge near downtown Murphy.

A boardwalk part of the confluence trail. The water level was high and we saw quite a few flooded trees.

Did we mention there were a lot of deer near our cabin?

We mean a lot of deer...

Even this majestic specimen.

David booked a nice restaurant for dinner in a nearby 1-stop-light community of Brasstown. The Crown was up on a hill and had great views of the Blue Ridge mountains at sunset. Their cocktails were really good and the food was rural community 5 stars (city 3.5 stars). The setting was a bit odd, and there was a nearby camp or something that gave cult vibes... maybe don't linger too late after dark. 😉

This covered porch is actually a solar pavilion. 

Solid cocktail game.

The southern sampler plate.

On our drive home the following day, we decided to route through Tallulah Gorge State Park in Georgia. We've been here before but never hiked down to the river (which is like 600 steps down). We were actually pretty close to the close-off time due to the heat. After 11am when it's hot they don't let people walk down anymore, and everyone is supposed to be out of the gorge by that time. We luckily got in, made it to the bottom and back up at 10:59am while the ranger was closing it off. Apparently, there is a fine if we were a few minutes later! Interestingly, you can actually get a permit to go further down the river than we did to a place with a natural water slide. Something to keep in mind for the future.

View of the falls.

The big pedestrian suspension bridge crossing the gorge.

Hurricane falls from the bottom.

Paul on the bridge.

We drove back to Atlanta, of course stopping for some Korean food in Gwinnett county on the way. We'll be back up to the mountains again soon!