A family friend had a big round-number birthday recently and we drove down to Central Virginia for the celebration. Meanwhile, I’m always on the lookout for opportunities to add to my various travel lists so I wondered how might I combine the two. I thought about county counting but I finished Virginia several years ago.
On the other hand, as I pondered it, I also track overnight counties (those where I spend an entire night) as a distinct subcategory, and I have plenty of those left in Virginia. So I made sure we booked a hotel in Augusta County for the first night of our trip and the independent City of Harrisonburg for the second night. That worked. Then maybe I could throw in a couple of breweries and add to that list too. I’d still have a few hours left for other activities but I’d take care of that easily enough.
Skyline Drive
With perfect autumn weather, seasonably brisk but brilliantly sunny, the outdoors seemed a natural choice. Leaves were just turning shades of yellow and red but the leaf-peeping hordes hadn’t descended yet.
We were already near the southern entrance to Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park, and that seemed like a good place to start. We selected the park’s Southern District, from Rockfish Gap (mile 104.6) up to Swift Run Gap (mile 65.5), which took a leisurely couple of hours with frequent stops at scenic vistas (map).
I should always bring my good camera but apparently I’ll never learn. Once again I was stuck with my phone that didn’t quite capture the mountainous landscape as well as I’d prefer. In my defense, my original plan was to go on a cave tour and the phone camera would have worked just fine. The weather was just too nice to head underground though so I’ll blame it on uncharacteristic spontaneity on my part.
Anyway, we stopped at lot of wonderful places along the route, even if the photos fell a little short of perfection: McCormick Gap, Sawmill Run, Turk Mountain, Moorman’s River, Horsehead Mountain, Doyles River, Rockytop and Loft Mountain.
JMU Campus
Back a long time ago in the dark ages, as I considered various higher educational opportunities, James Madison University made my short list (map). Ultimately I attended a different university although I came pretty close to choosing JMU. It’s a solid state school found in Harrisonburg, and it was next on our tour as we descended from Skyline Drive into the Shenandoah Valley.
We’re at that point where it’s time to consider options for my younger child who will graduate from high school in about eighteen months. It seemed like just yesterday that we were doing the same thing for the older one. But I needed to wipe away those nostalgic tears and focus on the present. We were heading towards Harrisonburg so we might as well take a stroll through the campus.
The kid didn’t seem particularly interested or thrilled although I don’t recall offering a choice either. That has nothing to do with JMU itself and everything to do with someone not particularly motivated to ponder what probably seems like an incomprehensibly distant event.
I enjoyed the campus although it’s hard to tell how this particular school will fare since it’s the very first visit in a lengthy process. Check back in a couple of years and I’ll let you know.
Pale Fire Brewing
But I do know that we walked past a brewery between the parking garage and the JMU campus. So naturally we stopped on the way back to the car and enjoyed a small beer flight on the outdoor patio of Pale Fire Brewing. Well, not the kid of course who got a soda, but my wife and I.
The brewery sat in a vacant industrial site recently converted into apartments and ground-level retail, called Ice House. Yes, it literally used to be an ice house, the Cassco Ice Factory complex built in the 1930’s. Refrigerators and freezers began to replace ice boxes in American homes right around that time so I guess it didn’t bode well for that particular business model. Anyway, I’m glad someone repurposed the building rather than tearing it down.
Arboretum
We still had some time left in the day and it was so beautiful outside that we decided to poke around JMU some more. That led to the 125 acre Edith J. Carrier Arboretum on the southern edge of campus.
James Madison has an interesting layout. It’s fairly compact and contiguous but Interstate 81 runs straight through the middle of it. There are a couple of ways across the highway including a pedestrian tunnel but we basically drove around the edge of the university to get to the arboretum, not that it was much of a hassle.
The arboretum was worth a minor detour. It offered a relaxing spot to enjoy a bunch of native plants in an attractive setting. The grounds included several casual walking paths through open space and into the woods, and also led to a labyrinth.
Brothers Craft Brewing
Then we dropped the kid off at the hotel because further torment was useless, and we still had a little time remaining for one more brewery before dinner. I’d been wanting to visit Brothers Craft Brewing for awhile. My local beer bar often stocks draughts from Brothers and they’ve been consistently good so I promised myself I’d stop by if I ever made it to Harrisonburg. So there we were. I could think of a lot worse places to spend an hour on a quiet Sunday afternoon.
Duke Dog
We found dinner at a random local sandwich place near the hotel, and spotted this guy in the lobby, a giant bulldog ready to lunge. James Madison’s sports teams are called the Dukes, and this dog is called, well, Duke Dog.
A bulldog named Duke makes sense. However it turns out the school didn’t get the nickname from a dog, but from an early president of the University who served in the first half of the 20th Century, Samuel Page Duke. So Duke came first and the dog came later, not that it really mattered. I’m just fascinated by weird connections like that.
Anyway, I came across another bit of trivia as I researched the name:
“On September 22, 2007, Duke Dog was tackled by Chanticleer, a chicken mascot from Coastal Carolina University. A fight between the mascots ensued, and the Duke Dog inadvertently struck one of the police officers who was trying to end the confrontation.”
YouTube seemed to provide evidence, too.
I’m no trained expert and I don’t know exactly what happened in the moments leading up to this, but it looks like Duke Dog started it by kicking Chanticleer the chicken in the butt.
Bad Dog! Bad Dog!
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