June 4, 2021 : Trip 4, Day 1 – Appomattox Court House & Shenandoah National Park

We begin our travels again with excitement and trepidation. We are ready to continue our travels, but concerns about travel during a waning pandemic are in our minds. Still, the joy of travel wins out over such concerns. We are headed up the east coast to see one national park, three state capitols, and several points of interest along the way. Best of all, we will be in New York for Annora’s birthday party.

We first stopped at Appomattox Court House, Virginia to see where the Civil War ended. While some fighting continued after General Lee surrendered to General Grant, Appomattox Court House is considered the place where the war ended. The process of the surrender was much more complex and lengthy than we expected. It began when Grant and Lee met at the McLean’s house in the town of Appomattox.

By today’s standards, this house was somewhat small. It was definitely large during its time. Lee and Grant met in one room of the house while the family was still in the house. They spent a long time discussing the terms of surrender. For all of the difficulty and horror of the war, the terms of surrender and the process of implementation were very simple. The Army of Northern Virginia was to surrender all their weapons and flags. They agreed to ending the fighting. In return, every member of the Army of Northern Virginia was given a pardon and allowed to return home. The pardon granted them safe passage home as well as free transportation and meals at federal locations. Lee requested and Grant agreed to provide printed pardons to every soldier that surrendered.

It only took three days to print 30,000 pardons for the soldiers. It is amazing that they were able to take a census of that many men and then print and distribute so many pardons in such a short time period. One of the staff at the site explained that while two presses are shown in the display, only a single press was available to do all that work. It is impressive that they could produce and distribute 30,000 pardons in 72 hours given the manual technology they had at the time.

For the duration of the process of surrender, the Courthouse was the headquarters of the operation. At the end of the process, the Army of Northern Virginia marched before the Union Army to surrender all weapons and flags. Then they went home. While this was not the true end of the war, it was the model used for all other armies as they surrendered over the next several weeks.

Our next stop on the first day was Shenandoah National Park. We drove about half way across the park today on Skyline Drive. There are numerous overlooks on Skyline Drive and lots of trails to hike. We stopped at eight overlooks and hiked one trail today.

We began our trek through Shenandoah National Park at the southern end of Skyline Drive. We stopped at the Crimora Lake Overlook where you could see for miles and miles. You can see why these mountains are called the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Skyline Drive is interesting in many respects. First, it is a relatively slow drive through the mountains. The speed limit is 35 mph. Next, it is full of sights to see. All the overlooks, a variety of flora and fauna, and an interesting sense of being back in time because the traffic is light even on busy days, so you can be alone on many parts of the road. As the road winds through the mountains, you get views to both the east and to the west. At Moorman’s River Overlook, we only saw wilderness as far as you could see.

Just before our first hike, we stopped at Blackrock Overlook. There we learned about talus, a natural rock formation that slowly slides downhill, changing the landscape as it moves. We took some interesting pictures of the talus for that overlook, not knowing what we would soon discover.

Our next stop was a hike on the Blackrock Summit Trail. It was a short hike, but very informative. At the top of the trail we got to see a talus up close and personal. Unlike the views we had just seen from a distance, the rocks are huge. It is hard to imagine such large rocks slowly sliding anywhere.

We made an interesting discovery when we continued around this huge pile of rocks. We had a great view of the Blackrock Overlook.

The open area in this picture is Blackrock Overlook, where we took the picture of the talus shown previously. The small gray brown patches in the trees in that picture are the huge rocks behind us shown above. We had a couple of more overlooks on our way out of the park for the day.

You could see a river from this overlook. The more amazing view was to see several ridges of mountains off into the distance. It was a great way to end our first day of travel in several months.