On the fourth day, I had a fresh morning since the breakfast there was AWESOME!!!! They had scrambled eggs, oatmeal, yogurt, bagel, and the best part: WAFFLES!!!! 😋 On Day 4, we were supposed to go on the Blue Ridge Parkway, an awesome scenery of the Appalachian Mountains, and visit some overlooks to see them. Just saying, Waynesboro is an awesome city if you’re going to stay at a hotel for a couple of nights!
At about 9:30 we visited the visitor center near the parkway. There I saw a really big map of the Shenandoah Valley/Mountains – a 3D one! The guy there was really nice and let us have a free info map of the Blue Ridge Mountains. We then went out and took some photos outside on the Visitor Center parking lot(it’s a nice ⛰ view).
Then, we went to the Parkway to view some scenery. It isn’t too high up there, only about 1,500 meters above sea level. After a few outlooks and nice comments about the mountain, we realized a major problem: we didn’t buy lunch yet!!!! 😱 So my dad rushed back to Waynesboro and bought some lunch at Panera. The lunch wasn’t much, mac and cheese for me and sandwiches for my mom/dad. After that, we rushed back to the parkway and continued our day trip.
Our next major stop was the Humpback Rock Visitor Center, where we ate lunch. We also had a ranger help us to get us to the actual outlook, where we could see the mountains from an AWESOME view. So we hopped in the car, drove to the outlook parking lot, not the Visitor parking lot, and gathered our stuff for a hike. At around 11 o’clock we started our hike up to the top! At first, I thought it would be only a mile, but it turns out that it felt much longer than that. 😱 It wasn’t that tiring for me, but for my mom had to stop a few times on the trip up. Trust me, if you’re on the trail it’s harder than you thought. The rocks were slippery, there was a small puddle we had to step over, worms(not earthworms, oversized millipedes, YUCK) and other obstacles. When we got to the top, we also had to be careful(since the scenery is on a big rock with NO handrailings) and flies. The trail was also steep, so there was a lot of peril that someone will fall. Luckily, the group stayed together and was careful. These flies aren’t houseflies, they are biting flies! There was a whole flock of them, and they DO bite like mosquitoes. 😡 So we had to take some photos and leave quickly. We didn’t stay there for long, only for about 20 minutes(dodging flies). After that, we headed down the same path and left the Humpback Rock overlook. On the way back though, I was almost running since the path was so steep!!!
After the Humpback Rocks we, at least TRIED to go to the next major overlook. Yes, there were some small overlooks on the way, and we visited them, but we wanted to go to the next one. Too bad we were running out of time, so we went as far as we can for the next major overlook was 60 miles from Humpback Rocks. We only got 30 miles before my mom decided we should go back to I-64(technically the entrance of the parkway). On the way, we celebrated my B-Day singing “Happy Birthday” in the car at 3:18. Why 3:18 PM? Well, because I was born at 3:18 PM on August 13th!!! It was awesome, surrounded by the mountains and seeing what it would be like if I was a mountain farmer(there were farms on the mountain). It started raining too, and we videotaped the storm closing on the mountain on an overlook.
Finally, we headed back to our hotel to stay at Waynesboro for our last night, and ate dinner there! This was the best day in our trip after all!!!! 😁😁😄😛😉
