Our first stop in Virginia was the college town of Blacksburg, home to the Hokies of Virginia Tech. Not quite in the Shenandoah Valley, but close to mountains, hiking and all the excitement of a big-time football college with 39,000 +/- students. We really thought this might be the place for us as we drove in on a Sunday afternoon. What a reality check we had…students were everywhere, filling up the downtown cafes, sidewalks and parking lots.
We looked at many different neighborhoods and took a long walk around town, peeking in at the 65,000-seat Virginia Tech football stadium, and wondered what the town must be like on game days.
Before heading north, we drove into the mountains above Blacksburg to check out a couple early 1900s covered bridges. That evening, we had a great dinner with former California neighbors, Jeannie and Jeff who were passing through Blacksburg and able to spend a night to catch up with us. Alas, after four days we decided Blacksburg might too much college for us.
After storing our trailer we drove to Harrisonburg in the heart of the Shenandoah Valley where we had hotel reservations and plans to do some serious exploring. Thinking back, my earliest memory of anything related to The Shenandoah was an afternoon spent watching the nearly three-hour, 1962 movie epic – How The West Was Won.
The 19th-century American folk song Oh Shenandoah featured prominently throughout the star-studded film that followed the Prescott family as they moved westward from New York during the years 1839-1889. I was captivated by both the movie and the song.
I could never have guessed that one day I’d find myself on a reverse journey (of sorts) to The Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, towing my (well, Reg does the towing) 21st-century version of a covered wagon.
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