Hit the town and did the normal stuff, like pick up mail, laundry and stayed in motel. Hitched in and out of town with no problem. I left my hiking partners who decided to do another zero...I was broke, so I needed to camp out.
Shenandoah National Park has nice "graded" trails that meant gentle rises and falls as it paralleled the Skyline Drive.
The road, called Blue Ridge Parkway to the south, has a strange history with the Appalachian Trail.
Benton MacKaye (the Soul of the AT), and Myron Avery (the Body) had a major conflict about road building in the 1930's.
MacKaye's vision was for a wilderness path with farm communities to provide a place for city folks to escape. He after all was one of the founders of the Wilderness Society.
Avery on the other had was the trail builder, the first to hike every inch of the trail and pushed hard to get the trail built by 1937.
An excellent book on this conflict is
Blazing Ahead: Benton MacKaye, Myron Avery, and the Rivalry That Built the Appalachian Trail
by Jeffrey Ryan
get your copy at Amazon, of course.
Oh yeah, a pic of the trail at one of the many road crossings.
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