Virginia is probably my favorite state in the Southeast . The state has an interesting and varied landscape ranging from the tidewater fishing towns along the Chesapeake Bay to the Blue Ridge and Allegheny mountain ranges with plenty of Colonial Era through Civil War history in between. There's something about Virginia seems different from the rest of the South. I’m not sure just what it is but have always had an impression of a place more genteel, of the plantation houses and correct manners and high class Southern accents. The reality is probably that there are as many rednecks, hicks, and hillbillies in Virginia as elsewhere in the South. But I hang on to my ideal….

The Shenandoah Valley is Virginia’s part of The Great Valley that runs between the Blue Ridge to the east and the first ridge of the Alleghenies to the west from about New Jersey to Tennessee. In Virginia the valley is drained by two forks of the river of the same name that joins the Potomac at Harpers Ferry. The Shenandoah Valley is hilly and scenic with low mountains in view almost everywhere with the Massanutten Range running down its middle for a stretch and no very large cities.

Shenandoah is one of the places in America I love in America, full of country roads and hill and farm scenery, small towns with historic houses and little churches where you can travel back roads and get away from the modern prefab convenience stores and fast food restaurants that look exactly same wherever you go . They’re all there, of course, but you can get away from them in landscapes that aren’t totally dominated by them.

I am quite familiar with the Shenandoah Valley since I lived in northern Virginia near Washington DC after college and often visited my brother who was in college then at Virginia Military Institute in Lexington. Back in those days I was quite impressed with the mountains, but since having hiked extensively in the Rocky Mountains and traveled around the world, including the Andes and Himalaya Ranges in the last two years, the Appalachians just seem like hills. They’re still pretty, but breathtaking has long not been a word I can use to describe them. I can still say "aaah", though.

There were a few minor sights in the valley I wanted to stop to see while the weather was still leaving some to be desired before driving the Skyline Drive on the forecast sunny day. Winchester and Staunton are two historic old towns I had never stopped in before, and Cedar Creek Battlefield NHS is one of those National Park units worth a quick check .

I have to say that there’s a huge difference in sites that are managed by the National Park Service or other units of the Federal Government and those run privately, as are those in valley. On the one hand my $80 National Parks pass gets me into all units of federal lands. Regardless, though, individual park unit fees are not too steep; as much as I visit national parks I sometimes don’t recoup the value of my pass purchase. On the other hand, though, every little privately run site charges a substantial amount for usually inferior displays - $12 for the tour at Belle Grove Plantation House (on NPS land at Cedar Creek Battlefield but privately run), $24 at Luray Caverns (which I decided to skip), and $14 at the Woodrow Wilson Birthplace and Presidential Museum/Library. Presidential Museums/Libraries have been federally managed since Herbert Hoover onwards and what I’ve seen are impressive facilities that give a good overview of each president’s life and presidency . I believe for more recent presidents the funding is private donations, but…whatever… Several earlier presidents have museums/libraries dedicated to them run either by states or private foundations, which is the case at Woodrow Wilson’s birth home/museum/library. So I learned a little about Wilson and went on a guided tour of the house he was born in, but the museum was really pretty paltry and quite lacking in objects of his presidency.

These experiences all make me believe the federal government should just run everything – take over some of those pathetically run private sites of historical importance and make them into National Park Service units. I’ve had it with the notion of privately run places of national interest and value!