King Charles III wrapped up his U.S. state visit on Thursday with a stop at Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, where he met Monacan chief Diane Shields, tribe elder Bertie Branham and junior park rangers before boarding his plane at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. The king’s departure ended a four-day visit that took him from Washington to New York and then to Virginia.
At the White House on Thursday morning, President Trump and first lady Melania Trump gave Charles and Queen Camilla a formal farewell before the couple traveled on for their final engagements. Charles then visited Arlington National Cemetery, took part in a parade and block party in Front Royal, Virginia, and met Indigenous leaders at the park, which sits in the Blue Ridge Mountains about 75 miles from Washington, D.C., and covers about 200,000 acres.
The Shenandoah National Park stop closed the Virginia leg of a trip that had already included a private bilateral meeting with Trump and an address to a joint session of Congress in Washington on Tuesday, then a day in New York capped by the King’s Trust Gala near Rockefeller Center on Wednesday. From Maryland, Charles continued his overseas tour with a planned first visit as monarch to Bermuda, while Camilla returned to the U.K.
The trip also came against the backdrop of a trade announcement from Trump, who said he would remove tariffs and restrictions on whiskey tied to Scotland’s ability to work with Kentucky on whiskey and bourbon. The president said the king and queen had helped push through a change that had eluded others, and called their visit an honor.
For Charles, the Virginia stop was more than a scenic finale at a park known for waterfalls and mountain views. It put Indigenous representatives, park staff and a visiting monarch in the same frame at the moment the state visit was ending, and it gave the trip a close that connected ceremony in Washington with the landscape and communities of Virginia.