Shenandoah National Park Day 2 ~ More Hiking!

The day started like yesterday - same wake-up time, same breakfast time, same breakfast. We decided to take the Rose River Loop Hike, a 4-mile circuit with a 910ft elevation change. We were on the trail by about 8:45am.....an easy start taking us along the gravel road.....

 

 Past the Cave Cemetery....

 

We then were on the trail, which started with some steps....

 

....eventually leading to a waterfall....

 

It was a lovely hike along a creek bed (we kept saying how nice it was that it poured so much yesterday so the water was flowing nicely)....and we enjoyed hearing the water as we hiked.....

 

Though there was some hiking in open forest too.....

 

Then at 10:20am, it started to drizzle.....okay, no biggie, it wasn't even enough of a rain to put on our rain jackets. Not that we had any other choice, we kept hiking.....

 

Then about 10 minutes later it POURED. POURED! POURED!! Thunder. Lightening. The works. 

Onward we hiked and were drenched - even in our rain jackets - drenched. By the time we made it to our car (11:30am) we were soaked and our waterproof boots were basically keeping the gallons (okay, maybe not gallons, but it felt like it) IN our boots, since waterproofing works both ways. 

By the way, notice how nice this trail sign is...clearly showing a hiker where to go.....

 However except for that one sign, all of the tail markers (on all three hikes we did) looked like this.....

 

 ...and at times the small embossing was quite difficult to read. (This happens to be a good/new one, but some of the older trail markers ones were very difficult to read - especially in that pouring rain!) 

(We also intended to do this hike clockwise, but once again missed a turn at the beginning and ended up going counter-clockwise, which while the views would have been better clock-wise, the hiking aspect was better clockwise.  So basically the only hike we did as intended was the linear in-and-out one! 😂)

 

By now we were cold and looking forward to hot showers,  but when we got to our room, the electricity was out and had been for a while (we found out later it went out at 10:15am)  - so no hot water - bummer. We put on dry clothes (hair still wet) and went to the lodge hoping/thinking that they would have back-up generators - nope. But they were still open for lunch (almost all items were still available as their grills ran on propane), so we had lunch (and hot tea!) and decide to drive south in the park for a while (with our heated seats turned on ....and weren't we complaining about the heat just the day before?????? 😂). 

 

Even though it had stopped raining, the clouds were still around.....

 

...and the fog rolled in......

 

Eventually we turned around and were happy to find that the electricity was back on - yay!  We showered and eventually went back to the lodge for dinner and to decide on our next destination - we had lots of thoughts about where to go next - and finally decided on Nashville - a place that Brad has mentioned in the past a few times. We hung out at the lodge using their WiFi and found a hotel in Nashville, eventually heading back to our room to pack as much as possible as we had a long day of driving the next day.