OK, as I said last time Ima gonna take a short break and the next two posts will be about our leaf peeping trip a couple weeks back. 

As I noted before…we left on Sunday about noon after Mass and choir singing by Connie and stopped overnight in Valdosta GA. The next morning we continued on to the southern end of the Blue Ridge Parkway, stopped at the visitor center, then did the first 50 miles or so of the parkway stopping overnight in Asheville NC. We were all pretty tired after 2 pretty long travel days but fortunately the remainder of the week (except for Friday and Saturday) was at a more relaxed pace averaging less than 100 miles of the parkway per day. Due to the remnants of the hurricane damage to the parkway there are still parts of the parkway that are not open…so Connie had done a bang up job before we left of figuring out where to get off and how to get to the next open section…then she checked nightly to verify that nothing had changed in the interim. The only drawback was that her detailed directions were something you might get in rural West Virginia or Kentucky…they had a lack of the number of miles to the next direction and a lot of things like “turn right at the Shell station” and “if you see the country store you’ve gone to far”. 

The general plan was to proceed up the parkway south to north with no really fixed itinerary beyond where we would spend the night. We had a list of hikes and waterfalls and other things to see that we planned on following as the whim struck us. 

Overall there were several things we noticed.

• Overall it was a less than great leaf season due to a lot of dry weather during the summer. It was still way, way better than leaf season in Florida though. While we didn’t get many sweeping panorama shots of mountainsides full of color we did get many closer in settings that made the trip worth it.
• Our friend Bill’s description of highway overlooks that had never had the brush and weeds cut back as “North Carolina overlooks” from years ago is still true…most of them were overgrown…and the disease has spread to both Virginia and the federal land on the parkway…most overlooks were overgrown.
• There are a lot of churches…and I mean a lot. We would drive through a town that probably had 1,500 people living in it max and there would be 7 or 8 churches…most of them Baptist. I’m guessing their congregations are too small to support a full time paid minister and there are a lot of volunteer hours put in at the church and the minister had to have a real job in addition to being the minister to support the family.
• The road along the parkway is really curvy although it didn’t have nearly as many blind curves with sheer drops on the outside as one would find out west. 
• Most of the really great color spots had no place to pull over for a photo…this didn’t stop Neil from edging over on the shoulder as much as possible and jumping out for one though.
• The seat of the pants idea worked pretty well. We ended up passing on the hikes (except for one short one) since we were at altitudes from 1,500 to over 5,000 feet and with age and being flatlanders there was just no air. The one hike we did was a short one to a waterfall but flow was pretty low so not a real great shot…but hey, better than no waterfall at all.

We had essentially 3 full days of leaf looking with a half day on both ends. I’ll split the week essentially in half over the next couple of posts. Lodging and eating will get a little bit of attention for the better places but both of those were later in the week.

As I said…it was a lot of over the river and through the woods…and although we did not make it to grandmother’s house we did make it to Grandfather Mountain and we saw it’s slightly shorter causing Grandmother Mountain from afar as they say in NC. 

You can see what I’m talking about with the lack of wide vista shots from these first few.

Our stop at Grandfather Mountain turned out to be a bit different than we thought. It’s supposedly a state park but inside the park there’s a large commercial development tourist trap sort of thing…we don’t normally do those but it was on the agenda for the day so we did and it was better than expected. This is Sphinx Rock partway up the mountain.

And right next to it is Split Rock…you’ll never guess where that name came from.

Up at the top you’re over one mile high and there’s a little swinging suspension bridge that goes over a piece of the gorge to the other side for a view. Here are Neil’s feet and legs as Connie took a shot of the bridge sign.

And here’s a shot of her facing her terror of heights and making it over to the other side…Neil made her go since he made her go to the tourist trap place.

As you can see above…the it’s not very far down as you go over the bridge but there is a wonderful view out to the right side from the far end.

The other claim to fame for the establishment…outside of the Mile High Bridge…is Forest Gump Curve. If you remember the movie…he ran down (or maybe up, I can’t remember exactly) this curve…and after putting Milepost 12 from Monument Valley where he turned around and headed home in the blog years ago when we were out west Neil decided to put this one as well so we’ve been to two famous locations from the movie.

And one from the bottom as well…

This was taken an overlook named the Dooley Overlook It’s named after Tom Dulla (pronounced Dooley in the local dialect back then) who was a Civil War veteran who stabbed and killed a woman and was convicted and hanged for it in 1868. Other than being from NC…he has little relation to the parkway but after the song was written about him later on he became a local legend and I guess the feds needed an overlook name.

The next morning we headed to Blowing Rock…which is a place where if you throw something off the cliff the prevailing winds blow it up and back into your face. We can concur that this happens.

While we were there…we noticed a helicopter flying nearby. Turns out it was carrying a tree trimming machine that was operated by a guy in a truck on the ground while the pilot just got it into the right position. He needed to lower it in the 10 or 15 feet of clearance between the power line along the inside of the road and the rock face behind the trees…and with the wind he was having lots of trouble. It was an interesting way to trim them though, and the power lines were of the high tension variety which ment the poles were too tall to easily reach with a bucket truck so I guess that’s the only way to get the job done.

And here’s the view from next to the Blowing Rock…that’s Grandfather mountain where we were before to the left with Grandmother Mountain to the right of it and farther away…probably 10 or 12 miles to the former from here…and as you can see not many sweeping vistas of fall color.

And that’s it for today. I already went a bit past halfway in the images Neil processed for me to finish up the Blowing Rock stop in this post so I’ll get back to ya in a day or three with the rest of the week.

Interesting things found on the net.

Cyas.