Backpacking- Mount Rogers

We finally made it to Grayson Highland State Park on our backpacking trip after a few stops along the way :).  The main goal of this trip was to hike to the top of Mount Rogers.  Mount Rogers is Virginia's highest point and is 5,728 ft high.  It is the only state high point East of the Mississippi River that you cannot drive to the top of.  (Yes, my husband knows all sorts of random facts!)  Todd has a goal to stand on top of every state's highest point.

We pulled in the parking lot on Friday afternoon and after talking to a man that goes by the name of "Lone Wolf" we were set.  He told us exactly where we wanted to go and where we should camp.  We hiked in and set up camp not to far from the summit.  It was very pretty and we actually felt like we were in real mountains, not hills.
   

The next day we woke up to rain. So we pulled out our rain clothes and hiked up to the top of Mount Rogers.  The summit was a little disappointing because it's covered in trees so there wasn't much of a view.  But that's okay, it was way too rainy and foggy that I don't think we would have been able to see much either way.  We found the summit seal, took some pictures, and headed back to the tents to enjoy some hot chocolate. 

 

The best part of our hike was all the wild ponies we saw.  They were everywhere.  They were so cute and little.  We even saw a few baby ones.  They were all pretty friendly and would let us pet them.  They just roam around on the mountain and don't seem to mind all the hikers.