Front Royal, VA to Loft Mountain

Since we only had 75 miles to travel today, we took our time this morning breaking camp. We left North Fork Resort at 11:00 and drove south on US-340 through downtown Front Royal.

From Front Royal to Loft Mountain

We had frequent glimpses of the South Fork Shenandoah River when it wound close to US-340.

From Front Royal to Loft Mountain

There weren’t a lot of places on US-340 where we could pull off to have
lunch, so we decided to stop at Luray Caverns and park in their parking lot to have lunch. We got to Luray Caverns a little before noon and found a place to park the RV. It looked to us that there were more people at the caverns on Thursday when we visited than are here today.

From Front Royal to Loft Mountain

After quick lunch we were back on the road by 12:30 and still heading south on US-340.

From Front Royal to Loft Mountain

We drove through farmlands

From Front Royal to Loft Mountain

and then through the small towns of Shenandoah and Elkton.

From Front Royal to Loft Mountain

We stopped at the Liberty gas station in Elkton at 1:00 to get gas in the RV ($3.459 a gal) before driving east on US-33 (Spotswood Trail) to the Swift Run Gap Entrance to the Skyline Drive.

From Front Royal to Loft Mountain

We stopped at the Ranger Station and showed my Senior Pass and driver’s license and received a brochure and map for the Shenandoah National Park. There is a $15 fee to drive on the Skyline Drive and the Senior Pass exempts us from having to pay the fee.

We drove 15 miles south on the Skyline Drive

From Front Royal to Loft Mountain

and arrived at the Loft Mountain Campground RV dump station at 1:45. We stopped here to fill up our fresh water tank before going on to the campground. It was 2:30 when we stopped at the Registration and Ranger Station, but there was no one there.

From Loft Mountain

Mike picked up a campground map at the Ranger Station and we drove around the campground to our campsite. We had reserved the campsite on the National Park website sometime ago and there was a Reserved card on our campsite.

We are in site #A40 that is our second favorite campsite here at Loft Mountain. Our favorite site is A39, but that is now a Group campsite. Since we have no hookups here, it doesn’t take too long to set up camp.

Mike set up our Dish 500 antenna and we couldn’t get a signal to come in. So while I made coffee, Mike put out our folding chairs. We sat outside and enjoyed the cooler weather.

From Loft Mountain

Then later we tried tuning in the satellite TV again. The hardest part is getting the right zip code to program into our receiver box. Since we’re so far from any town, we just pick a town that we’re closest to and try that zip code and the coordinates. We finally used the Waynesboro zip code and we were able to get satellite TV.