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May 2026 (Part 01)

Shenandoah NP

We went camping for a weekend again in Shenandoah NP, this time for Mother's Day.  The weather was a lot nicer than last time and we had a nice weekend.  We strayed in the Matthew's Arm campground in the northern section, arriving on Friday evening.  On Saturday, we set out on a hike with Andy (Lexi wisely stayed behind), heading out on a loop to Elkwallow which joined the AT, then west along Jeremys Run and joining the Knob Mountain trail.  Instead of heading back to the campground, we voted to go 2 miles to Knob Mountain, adding four miles to the hike.  A bit of a letdown as the summit was thickly covered in trees and didn't provide much of a lookout.  Still a nice hike.  We finally made it back to the campground after 11.5 miles and over five hours with an elevation change of 2,274 feet (according to the All Trails app).

Some fun shelf fungi and columbines along the trail. 

Believe this is a scarlet tanager. 

Lots of chipmunks scurrying around in the brush.

On Sunday, we all went for a shorter hike around the campground on the Traces Trail.  Came around a corner to find this deer just hanging out.

There were an amazing amount of small wildflowers, which we naturally had to stop at to take a picture of so we could identify them once we had cell coverage.

Where there are wildflowers, there are butterflies.