The Blue Ridge Parkway - you can hardly take it all in. 469 miles from Waynesboro, Va, where we entered to... well, I don't know 'cause we got off after two days in Ashville, NC, at mile marker 393.
Speed limit is 45 miles an hour, no kidding; it has no stop lights or signs but isn't a freeway for sure! Looks a lot like this out the front of the car. Hours and miles on end - curves more than straight-of-way. The North Carolina part is more like this, mostly mountainy with shorter trees, pines. Virginia, where we started, is starkly forested with tall hardwoods and craggy.
We entered 8:00 a.m. in solid fog and began to literally pray the fog off the ridge. By 9:00 we could look over the edge of the road at views.
So far these pics are from the Internet. Now for mine. Two days - there
might be are lots.
DAY ONE:
The parkway is rhododendron heaven. I mean it. May is the month! This is only one variety we saw. It's about the
first thing we saw! Imagine the two days driving with varieties of these lining the road, rocks, valleys, and hillsides.
A climb for a view. Everything seems uphill here.
Panorama.
Click this pic. Isn't the man funny! You guys we had so much fun stopping every so often this first day at the overlooks and trails. The parkway is perfectly marked and the stops are turning out to be wonderful! Most everything IS uphill and worth the struggle up.
I'm skipping so many things . . . lunchtime . . . .
Where we ate lunch was not at a picnic table under shade trees with breezes, thank you. Nor a coffee shop or cafe, of which there are dangerously few for us travelers, eh. Thank goodness not so with the restrooms. Not in our car from the cooler and food bag. (Not). In a stream! On a rock, me with my shoes off. Ahhh....
Otter Creek Dam and falls, a man-made affair. Beautiful. We
love the sound of water.
Walked around Otter Lake, almost a mile. The trail map we had designated it
moderate, but if that was moderate, I never hope to see
strenuous.
I'm on the trail around the lake, up high and closed in by the trees.
Trail ends in a gentle creek crossing on stepping stones. Yeah. We played here awhile before getting back in the car. Kent beats me at everything - he's like a goat on the trails and crossing the creek. He posed on a log over the creek for me and almost fell in! Almost fell of the trail a few times too. Is he fearless or silly? :) We saw tadpoles here, and giant rocks around the area, and even on the trail a beaver dam - which turned it to marsh. We waded through - the forest rangers need to get in there and pull the plug on that!
The James River on one side of the pedestrian bridge we used to cross it (below). The parkway runs above that. Our goal here was an exhibit of a canal lock a half mile away. Really interesting.
Can't resist.
Abbot Lake. Another mile stroll around a lake through forest and meadow. Funny story: As we walked the lake perimeter, frogs we could never
ever see jumped from the marsh edge right into the water, squeaking, yelping, croaking, crying as they went. Who knew they could make such sounds! Every step we took made a frog yelp and jump! Kent stood still, looking, at one point, meowing. (He meows at everything. He's contrary. Ruins half my nature pictures with his meows. Like, birds don't love that, nor chipmunks. Frogs?) We saw a water snake in the reeds, coiled, its head up and basking - watching bugs and the frogs I bet.
We ended the day coming off the parkway six miles to Floyd, Va, where we stayed in truly one of the most unique hotels of the trip. Hotel Floyd, in the high mountains, where there wasn't more than two bars of wireless service so I got to carry the laptop and wired mouse and EHD in hand to the main office and sit at the desk with the manager to get Internet service. No biggie, kind of fun. It was the biggest room we had for the price by far, with the coolest views, best bathtub and shower and greatest bed, and the shortest distance to dinner. We ate at the Blue Ridge Diner, within walking distance - southern style cooking. I had brown beans. (Pintos). Mashed potatoes and Cole slaw. Kent had hamburger steak and mashed potatoes and gravy on all. Home style biscuits. Passed on the coconut cream pie. I'm doing a lot of that. But I was not above being very, very tempted. Sigh. We slept like the dead from so much twisting and turning on the drive and up and down walking the trails and hills.
DAY TWO:
Had to strongly consider what to do about today: Where you get back on the parkway from Floyd, within a very few miles you have to make a decision either to get off (forgo the adventure) and drive Interstate all the way into Asheville, NC, what, a hundred miles, plus, if that's what you want to do, or pass that exit off the parkway and then
have to stay on it the whole way down, 200 miles windy, windy, windy. (That's windy,
l o n g "i."
Wahyinnnndy.) We said
if we get off, why not just go on home? Why even go to Ashville? Seven hours home from Floyd. Might as well. Then we said, we came here, we're here, we stayed in a hotel in the mountains on purpose to do this - so let's do it. Stay on the parkway the whole way! Never mind it's two hundred miles to Asheville this way, and 45 mph no kidding, and we're gobsmacked from yesterday. (I admitted then to Kent that windy-windy isn't my thing so much, then swallowed it down.) (He told me a day or so after we got home that his shoulder was hurting him, driving so much. He never said. . . . hmm.)
We're lovin' it - soldiering on.
Mabry Mill - a hundred year-old classic grist and sawmill with blacksmith shop.
Flame azaleas. Way different variety from ours at home.
Little sump'n-sump'n in the sunshine.
At the Cascades stopoff we took a 1.2-mile loop down along a dirt trail and then these stairs to view the head of Cascades waterfall, and then back up.
Ohhhhh for tired and beautiful! Why does everything that's grand either start or stop uphill? :)
Internet photo: We could never get down to these lower falls . . .
Kent at the upper falls. He's a babe. Really, take a sec to click on this and see up close. I love his look. Love the light. It's one of my best memories from the trip.
Okay. I confess I was knock-kneed on this ledge we were standing on viewing the falls. For instance, to take the picture above of Kent I had to creep back toward the edge of it (it has about a three-foot high protective stone wall) grinding my teeth and whimpering with vertigo. In the photo below is what you see when you turn and look over the wall. Agghhhhh! You SO can't even see straight down. Don't even want to go there. Your eye just follow the falls to the bottom and you straight move away from the view and become a wall-hugger. But, what? A flower growing out of the cliff over the wall?! Yes, please.
I crouched (so quieting the vertigo, right?) toward the wall and placed my elbows on it for my camera "tripod." I prayed. I focused on the flower, not the rapids, not my nauseous insides, not the buzzing in my head. I extended the lens, zooming, zooming for the flower.
Kent, I cried,
the lens is over the edge! (He laughs.) I tremble.
What do you think?
We're beyond pooped. More than. For miles we've been done with overlooks. Falls. Rocks. Trails. Lakes. Streams. Road. Get the picture? There's just this.
Goodbye Blue Ridge Parkway. We love you.
