Kent-boy Visits Walton's Mountain

Last weekend I met Kent at work and we drove over to the Shenandoah mountains. We wanted to spend the night so we could get an early start on Saturday to see the fall colors. We had to contend with DC traffic getting out of the city, so it took us over four hours to get to the Residence Inn we were staying at in the town of Waynesboro, which is right at the entrance to Shenandoah National Park. We woke up on Saturday to a very overcast and rainy day, but we put on our raincoats and headed out. In the mountains there were rainy patches, but the sun did occasionally peek out.

Skyline Drive was built during the Depression as one of FDR's civilian work corps projects. It's built along the top ridge of the mountains, with a scenic viewpoint stop almost every mile.

You may notice in many of these pictures the stone wall built along the side of the road. You don't see those very many places in the U.S.!

Unfortunately, our camera didn't do a very good job of capturing the vividness of the fall colors.

We'd planned to do some hiking in the national forest, but didn't because of the rain.

One reason I chose to stay in Waynesboro was because it was close to the small town which was the inspiration for the 70's tv series, "The Waltons". Some of you may remember that Kent went through a phase while we were living in Germany where he was watching the DVD's of "The Waltons". Let's see, I think it was after his "Bonanza" phase and before his "Daniel Boone" phase.

When we moved to Virginia and found out there was a "Walton's Mountain" Museum, we knew we'd have to go there one day. We had to drive on some small, winding, and even a dirt road to get to the itty-bitty town, but we got there. Surprisingly enough, there were about 20-30 other people in the little museum that rainy Saturday afternoon.
The museum had some replicas of some of the sets from the TV show, and lots of memorabilia, like lunchboxes, paper dolls, games and books from the 70's. It was interesting, and we learned lots about the man who wrote the book the series was based on, and about the actors who played the different characters. All in all we had a nice weekend, with maybe more driving than we'd wanted to, because of the rain. We were home by dinner time on Saturday.

In the spirit of the TV series, I'd like to end this blog post by saying, "Good night, Kent-boy."