Stairmastering it at Shenandoah

Even though temperatures on this "fall" weekend were hovering up near ninety, Jeff and I decided to head down to Shenandoah for a hike. With the elevation there, it's usually cooler, and this was true yesterday, as the temperatures were closer to 80. We've done a fair bit of hiking in Shenandoah and wanted to do a new trail, so we stopped in at the visitor center to get a recommendation from a ranger.

We ended up 19 miles down Skyline Drive on a hike to Little Devils Stairs. We were doing the circuit route from the parking lot, with the total miles to be hiked at 7.7. About 5 of those miles are along a fire road, so the trail is wide and there aren't too many steep changes in grade. It was kind of like walking down a country road.


For the most part, the trees were still green, although off on the hillside you could see a few trees beginning to change.


And even though the trees weren't bursting with color, there were plenty of colorful and interesting plants to enjoy.






The other 2.5 miles or so of the hike were much more strenuous, pretty much a rock scramble down into a canyon and then back out. The trail crossed over streams (although the current drought conditions left most of them dry or just barely trickling) and up cliff faces. It was quite a lot of fun, although also hard work. And it was very, very humid down in the canyon, not at all cool like it was up on the fire road. In total, the hike took us 3.5 hours and was a very good work-out. I'd be lying if I said we didn't feel it today.



Towards the end of the hike, we saw something neither of us had ever seen before and felt duty-bound to document it for all of you.




That's right, stick-bug sex. Bet you've never seen that before, now have you?