Tour audio Shenandoah National Park: Views from Skyline Drive

Welcome to Shenandoah National Park and the 105 mile Skyline Dr.

Along the Drive, you’ll have the opportunity to see the amazingly diverse topography of this beautiful Ridge, hear the stories of the families that once inhabited this land, and glimpse into a billion years of geologic history.

There are seventy overlooks along the Drive, too many to visit. On this audiotour , I will tell you a little story about each of them, as you approach its turnoff.

And all you need to do, assuming you have downloaded the free app, and chosen this tour, is push START and drive, and the app does the rest, using GPS and satellites. And assuming your phone’s location is turned on, the audio will automatically trigger, and I’ll give you a short preview of what’s interesting at that overlook. Because cell service is a bit patchy up on the Drive we do recommend you download the tour on your phone, so satellites can do the heavy lifting… and you’re not using your phone’s minutes.  

So before we start, please keep in mind that, what you see today is just a point in time. One hundred years ago, this land was largely cleared and inhabited by hundreds of families making a living off the mountain.

Four hundred years ago, indigenous tribes ruled this land, so rich in natural resources.

But it is the ancient history that you will see along the Drive, in the rock cut to create the Drive.

Because, it was only 200 million years ago, that these mountains rose from the earth in the most recent mountain building event in this part of the world. 100 million years before that, this land was an ocean, and 200 million years before that volcanoes ruled this part of the world, and 500 million years before that, you would have been on the top of a mountain as high as the Alps. It’s hard to imagine, but we’ll talk about all of that along Skyline Drive, where clues abound to its fascinating geologic history.

So let’s take a drive together along the Beautiful Blue Ridge.

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Music: Inspiring Acoustic by Vladimir Zlotnikov; licensed by Pond5

Photo: A Rainy Blue Ridge by Ken Thomas and licensed in the Public Domain in Wikimedia.com