Skyline.

We got home a couple of hours ago from our 24 hour adventure in Shenandoah National Park, a beautiful place.

Our campsite was picturesque, to say the least; right beyond those green bushes on the other side of our tent lays the Appalachian Trail {read about it HERE or HERE}; I loved thinking about all of the intrepid souls who've hiked past our little site. 

And the view beyond that that Mike's checking out here is just a big, beautiful valley.

The campsites were clean, spacious, and bear free...for us. The rangers told us that they had been chasing out bears all.day.long and to very meticulously keep ALL of our goods {except firewood} inside of our bear locker.

They even fined our neighbors who had left out some stuff, so they are serious about keeping Smokey {& Yogi} away.

I'm not gonna lie, I appreciate their efforts!

Guinness loves the part of camping that involves being inside the tent. Other than that, since he can't roam freely {we're not about to risk a fine; they're quick on these in this park!} he sits and whines at us.

We got in about 5:45, quickly set up camp, cooked and ate dinner, tried to enjoy a weak fire, then turned in for the night.

Which was good timing because it soon began to pour and was still at it when we drove out at noon today.

I had never been camping in the rain, nor had I ever cleaned up camp in such conditions; we certainly got wet but only in the clean-up stage since we had a tarpaulin that we rigged to cover our tent for the night {CLUTCH idea from the ranger}.

The morning rain and fog were very pretty in their own, rainy, foggy way.

We ditched cooking breakfast and hiking so instead we drove through Skyline Boulevard {it's a 105 mile long road that runs the length of the park} a bit and checked out the visitor's center and lodge.

We're actually planning on going back next month with a group of friends and I'm looking forward to a wee bit more leisure in our pace {an extra night and a whole day more} but this was a FABULOUS way to spend a weekend.

xoxo, natty ♥