The first night of our road trip we spent the night at Cracker Barrel. We just needed a quick place to sleep for the night so we could get some rest after 9 hours of driving, but we wanted to get up early the next day and continue on our trip. 

We stayed at the Cracker Barrel in Front Royal, Virginia because this is where the scenic Skyline Drive begins. We wanted to move south quickly to avoid snow, which is why we decided to drive directly through Pennsylvania, Maryland and West Virginia on the first day, but we also wanted to enjoy the trip so we figured a good compromise was to take the Skyline Drive and Blue Ridge Parkway to the south. 

That is partly why we didn’t mind spending 8-9 hours driving on the boring highways the first day. We knew it was only 1 day and our excitement for finally taking off on our trip would help to carry us through the long, dreary drive.

We got an early start to the day and after eating breakfast, we hit the road again for the scenic drive. Our plan was to drive through the whole section of Skyline Drive and only a small portion of the Blue Ridge Parkway. We had a campsite booked at the KOA in Lynchburg, VA that night so we had all day to make our way there.

Based on our research, it should have taken approximately 2 hours to drive through Skyline Drive so we figured it was fine if we stopped every so often to appreciate the beauty of the mountains. After the 2 hours passed, we realized that we were only at mile marker 30 and its about 105 miles long! We then realized that we were obviously taking way longer than we should have, but we were enjoying it too much to care.

At our first stop along the route, we were standing on the edge of the mountain taking in the peaceful scenery that surrounded us, when we heard a noise. Ryan instantly knew it was a deer. Then I noticed a doe staring at me through the bush that I was standing next to. She was eating lunch. We noticed 2 other deer walking around nearby as well. We couldn’t get a good look at 1 of them, but the 2 that we could see were both does. 

After we spent some time watching the deer roam around finding their food, we got back in the truck and continued on the drive. We continued stopping at all of the overlooks. Each overlook gave us a different view of the mountains and valleys around us, each at a different angle, but each as equally beautiful.

It took us about 6 hours just to complete the Skyline Drive!! We stopped so much along the way. Part of the reason we stopped for so long was that Ryan had to attend a meeting for work and since we were in the mountains his internet signal was spotty. We had found an overlook that provided him with just enough signal to attend the meeting so we didn’t want to chance driving because he would have surely lost connection. 

Even so, 6 hours was a much longer time than what we had anticipated. It was a good thing we had our house with us! It’s great always having a bathroom and food with you while driving! We spent an hour enjoying our lunch at one of the overlooks, looking out at the mountains.

Since we spent so much time driving through the Skyline Drive portion of our planned trip, we knew we were going to have to pick up the pace to get through the first section of the Blue Ridge Parkway in order to make it to our campsite at a reasonable hour. 

It ended up working out fairly well, though, because there were fewer overlooks on the Blue Ridge Parkway anyway and many of them were a bit small for us to pull into.

We finished the drive around 5:45pm, which was a little later than we expected. We had wanted to try to get out of the parkway before dark because there were so many deer in the area. The sun set around 4:45-5:00 so we had to drive in the dark towards the end of the trip. By that point, Ryan put his computer away so he could be another set of eyes on the road to watch out for any deer that may jump in front of us.

Along the drive we saw a total of 9 deer. One of them was a buck with 4 points. He ran across the road right in front of us! But at least he did that during the day so it was easy to see him and he was a pretty good distance away from us. I was able to safely slow down and stop to make sure no other deer would follow his lead. 

We also saw a baby deer standing on the side of the road, watching us slowly drive by. All of the other deer we had seen would run away the second they heard us coming. Our diesel engine is not exactly quiet... but this little one just stood there watching, which allowed us to take a picture.

We joked around saying that we were already having better luck at finding deer this year than my grandpa. He likes to go hunting, but he hasn’t seen many deer this year.

We completed the first 70 miles of the Blue Ridge Parkway that day. Once we got to the end of that section, we drove to the KOA that was nearby for another quick overnight. We were delighted to see that we were given a pull-thru spot. We were tired and it was dark so we were happy that we didn’t have to attempt to back into the space. 

Our site was on a bit of a slope and we didn’t feel like adjusting the RV so we had a slight incline to walk up once inside our home. It was interesting. Even though it was a very minor slope, it made quite a difference in the feel of the RV. Walking from the bedroom to the living room caused me to practically run downhill and upon my return to the bedroom, I could feel the mild uphill climb.

It really wasn’t a big deal and considering we were only staying for the night, we just didn’t care enough to fix it. We ended up falling asleep early that night anyway so that we could get another early start the following day to continue on our journey. Our next destination was North Carolina!