Blue Ridge Parkway and Resort Camping

We are continuing our journey deeper into the state of Virginia, as we head to our weekend stay at Stony Creek Resort near Greenville, Virginia. The key words in that description are "resort" and "weekend" which means that many people from the surrounding area come here for a short mini-vacation every weekend. So we are jammed into a campground with more than 400 sites--most of them full for the weekend. This place has a lake and a pool, a restaurant and a store, and many Virginians just leave their RV here all summer. We don't usually stay at places like this, but they offer a half-price Passport America price even on the hard-to-find-a-camping-spot-weekend. That was too good to pass up!

To get out of the crowds at the campground, we headed out to explore. The GPS took us on a narrow gravel road to get to our destination for the afternoon--the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Traveling this seldom-traveled road was a little like going on a hike through the woods, complete with wildlife sightings.

We stopped in at the Visitor's Office at this northern section of the Blue Ridge Parkway to get a map and hiking advice. Back in 2017, we explored much of the 469-mile-long Blue Ridge Parkway that stretches through North Carolina and Virginia. But we never made it to this most-northern section. Today we were advised to take the trail that started about a mile from the visitor center. We were so happy to discover that we had a good enough phone signal to get a call today. We love getting calls from our children and grandchildren! This is what it looks like to face-time on a Blue Ridge Parkway trail!

We would stand and talk awhile, then hike and talk a little, then sit and talk, then hike and talk a little further. Talking with a four-year-old while hiking completely makes you forget how steep this trail is! It wasn't long after our thirty-minute phone call that the trail opened up to the sky. We had arrived at Humpback Rocks!

As we sat high above the ledges of the rocks, we can testify that this is another of God's wonders!

It was a perfect place to look out over the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.

A giant rock cairn is at the entrance of the Humpback Rocks. Mark climbed to the top to place a new rock on the tippy-top of the pile.

We have two choices at this summit. We can return to the pickup on the steep 1.4-mile trail that we just came up, or we can make this into a loop trail by hiking on the Appalachian Trail (AT) for 3.1 miles back to the pickup. It takes more miles to make it a loop, but we really prefer that over out-and-back trails.

The Appalachian Trail stretches from Georgia to Maine, and traverses much of the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was fun to see the white blazes on the trees that signify we are on this historic trail. We were hoping to see some through-hikers that are doing all 2,190 miles of the trail. But we didn't see a single hiker this evening.

We had met two guys carrying weed-slingers on the Humpback Rocks trail. We found evidence of their work today on the AT. We saw miles of freshly cleared greenery, and their efforts will keep this long trail easy to follow.

After the chaos of the campground this 4.5-mile hike was a peaceful alternative for our Saturday. We describe very green trails like this one as being "nicely fernished."

After our hike, we drove about twenty miles further south on the Blue Ridge Parkway. We stopped at many of the viewpoints as the setting sun was lighting up the mountains to the east of us. There aren't many roads that exit off this parkway in the mountains, but we finally found a road that would take us back to our campground.

We were trying to get back for the resort's Saturday night entertainment. The live band and dancing was well attended by the crowd staying at Stony Creek tonight. Even though our legs were tired from a mountain hike, we easily found the energy to do some dancing this evening.

The next morning we were up early for another perk of resort living--Sunday morning breakfast at their cafe. We split the big breakfast with three plate-size pancakes, bacon, sausage, fried eggs, toast, and home fries. Wow! we're going to have to do some more hiking to work off all those calories during our resort camping experience near the Blue Ridge Parkway.