Friday, May 6, 2016

Blue Ridge Parkway National Park

Our second National Park was the Blue Ridge Parkway. Here is the thing about it: It's a 469 mile road that connects two other national parks. We drove the whole thing. It is a long winding, scenic road with lots of overlooks for the view. There are no businesses on it. You have to drive off the parkway for food, gas, etc. It's very peaceful. But a lot of my pictures look the same. I took a TON of photos. Here are some.

 There a lots of tunnels like this.
I have heard of Plott hounds before. I was excited to learn that this is where they come from.





Can you see the silly stupid person climbing on this rock where he has no business being?


This is looking glass rock. It said that there are streams of water that seep out of the rock. In the winter, they freeze and are shiny. That's where it got it's name.




This is like slide rock. It was longer than bigger than the photo I took. It was pretty cold for these brave people to be in there. I posted a video of some people sliding on it on Facebook.


You weren't supposed to take photos inside of the Folk Art Center. I snuck some on my phone. They are posted on my facebook page.


Here we are on top of the highest peak East of  the Mississippi River.






Another plant I was excited to see in person, a trillium. It's another spring wildflower that doesn't grow out west.

There was a group of them. And the one below was a little pink.


Another little stop along the way.

This is the Lynn Cove Viaduct. The visitor's center where you can take cool pictures was closed. These were snapped quickly through the windshield. They didn't have a way to build the road here, so put it up in an S shape through the tops of the trees on stilts.




We saw lots of these signs. You need to pay attention to them or you might end up going in the wrong direction. Not that that happened to us or anything. Ahem.

Blowing Rock was cute artsy town, kind of like Sedona. It was raining a lot while we were there, but we made it into a few shops and drove around to enjoy it some.








This was interesting and I had that song stuck in my head all day.


We spent one night in Mt. Airy, NC. It's where Andy Griffith is from. It's done up to look like Mayberry. I had a few other pics on Facebook. We went to an interesting museum exhibit on Chang and Eng, the Siamese twins who lived here. Look them up.


The Blue Ridge Music Center was closed, much to my disappointment. So we drove into the town of Galax, VA to check out the music scene. This area is known as part of the Roots music trail and is very famous for bluegrass and roots music, music festivals and jams. These are real fiddles that spell LOVE.

 A display of guitar picks.
I thought these mandolins were so pretty. I just wanted one. Never mind that I don't know how to play one.

We had lunch at this BBQ place. Cindy wanted to see a wild pig because we heard they were out there. This is the closest we got.



This had been the home of a woman who was a midwife. She didn't start being a midwife until she was 50. She still delivered over 1000 babies. She had 17 of her own babies, but none lived to adulthood. She lived here alone until she was like a 102. It's a very primitive cabin.






Cade's mill is the most photographed spot on the Parkway.

Old cabin.

Old moonshine still


This is Primland. We read about this fancy resort in our guide book and wanted to see it. In addition to the main lodge, there are lots of cabins and a couple of tree houses to rent. We got lost a couple of times trying to find it and took a ridiculously long time to get there. There was a guarded gated entrance and we had to talk our way in. It was a bit of a disappointment after all we went through to see it.





Some kind of  spider had these types of webs all over the ground in this one area.

Beautiful morning at Mt. Roanoke. I have a great video with the birds singing on Facebook.



We had a lot of fog intermittently this day.






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