On Wed, Jun 8, 2011 at 10:52 AM, John Sessoms <[email protected]> wrote: > What I'm trying to do is plan the trip so I leave home, drive up to Front > Royal & down Skyline Drive to one of the camping areas on the first day. > > From there I want to proceed south along Skyline drive to the Blue Ridge > Parkway all the way down to the southern end, camping along the way. > > I want to select distances that only have me "driving" for 5-6 hours. That > will leave plenty of time for stopping and dawdling along the way. But I > also want to select distances that will put me in the vicinity of another > NPS campground along the Parkway when I'm done driving for the day. > > And I'm trying to figure out how many days total to allow for the drive > doing it in 5-6 hour increments. I want to use the drive time feature in > Google to do all that for me instead of having to calculate it myself.
What I've done on my trips down (and I've done several so far), is to keep a list of the campgrounds along the Blue Ridge Parkway. There is a list somewhere on the web (Google again) with all of them, and their milepost markings. I even printed it out in small print and put it in the map pocket on my motorcycle. >From there, it's simply a matter of figuring how many miles you're doing in a day, and back-figure from there. From my recollection, doing 8 hours or so a day of travel, I was able to get from Harrisburg, PA to the Peaks of Otter (milepost 86) on the BRP in one day. From there to GFM (milepost 305 off of the BRP) was about 5-6 hours or so without rushing. And from there to the end of the BRP was about another 4-5 hours, again without rushing. Speed limit on Skyline Drive is lower than the BRP, and they do patrol it more. You're also more likely to get behind a slow-moving convoy of large RVs, so plan accordingly. Also, if you can bypass the town of Front Royal, you'll save a decent chunk of time. There's always a lot of traffic going through the town, and it's stop-and-go with traffic lights. -Mat -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
