"Shanandoah..."

Go ahead, I dare you to not have that song in your head as you read this.
West Virginia was lovely and we celebrated our departure, and our anniversary, by hiking up to the top of the Seneca Rocks, 1000 feet from the valley floor, about three miles round trip. And then it was down the mountains into Virginia and a relaxing BnB in Staunton (pronounced as if the 'u" wasn't there). Staunton is home to the American Shakespeare Company, performing in a replica of the Blackfriars Theatre, Shakespeare's indoor theatre in London. The small company performed a rousing production of "The Merry Wives of Windsor", one of the comedies that I have not seen. Very funny - almost the invention of sitcoms, with trickery, puns, and jokes, including a "stand-up" dialog where a teacher and a student dscover that some Latin declensions sound absolutely vulgar in English. "Horum est" indeed!
Staunton is also close to the southern end of Shanandoah National Park and its Skyline Drive. Choosing to enter the park 1/3 of the way up the drive, we discovered that Sundays are "no fee" days. We also discovered that, contrary to the website, the lodges on the drive had rooms available. So we were able to get a fabulous room at Skylands, overlooking the western side of the mountain. Which enabled us to explore a little more of the park: Dark Hollow Falls, a short but steep walk of about 1.5 miles round trip. It was tough to ignore the little voice in the back of our heads whispering, as we descended toward the falls, "you have to walk this back up...you have to walk this back UP..." But we made it. Enough to allow us to walk up (you get to walk down after!) to Stony Man Point, another mile or so to a rugged cliff, supposedly on the "forehead" of a face-like outcropping, just in time to watch the sun set into the mists over the western Appalachians. Walking back in the dusk, a few deer and their fawns took a moment out of their evening meal to watch us go by. We returned to Skylands and sat on the porch once again, watching as the stars above and streetlights far below began to twinkle on.