Blue Ridge Mountains.

     

   Our motel units were comfortable enough to give us a good night sleep.  The free breakfast was a bonus.  Packed and ready, we checked out and once again set our GPS units to get us up the road towards the Blue Ridge Parkway.  The gateway to our piece of the Parkway was Glowing Rock, Tennessee.  This time, however, we did not solely rely on gps to get us there.  We did the old school and grabbed a map!  It was still a long drive and actually took a little longer than we had thought.  We arrived unscathed without being pulled into the Bermuda Grass Triangle at Tupelo.
    

About mid afternoon we drove up onto the Blue Ridge Parkway and headed South towards our destination of Asheville, North Carolina.  The drive along this stretch of the country is normally very beautiful with awesome views of the Smokey Mountains.  Today, however, everything seemed to be "smokey" because of the weather.  A light rain occasionally fell on us as we traveled south.  The wind was blowing and there was a distinct chill in the air.
   We often stopped along  the way, trying to get a good photograph of the distant mountains.  The sun would occasionally peek out and tease us with a gorgeous rainbow.  Those occurred at places where we couldn’t pull over and lasted only seconds!  So we did the best we could with our photographs.
   One of the most amazing feats along this stretch of the parkway was the construction of the Viaduct, a "bridge" built along the curvature of the mountain.  We could not get a really goo picture of this part of the road but we did our best.  We stopped at a Visitor’s Center and looked at photos of this Viaduct.  I also took a short hike to an observation point where I could see a portion of the Viaduct.  The trail went beneath the road and up onto the mountain on the other side of the road.  The last part was a bit rough as I made my way across stepping stones, tree roots and boulders.
   It started to rain again, so I made my way back towards the parking lot.  Debby came up the trail to see if I was ready to go.  The fall colors were beginning to show with yellows and reds but still too early for gorgeous colors! 
   We made another vista stop or two, snapping photos as quickly as possible to avoid the biting wind and rain.  About 20 miles from Mount Mitchell, the highest point on the parkway, a young family pulled up alongside of us as we began to pull away from our parking spot to tell us that the road was closed at Mt Mitchell with snow and ice falling!  So much for making our destination in good time, we had to turn around and travel a few hours out of our way to get off the mountain.  The two lane highway we took was a twisting turning mess of switchbackswith some 190 degree turns.  After taking our motion sickness pills and descending this mountain to the valley floor, we finally made it!  Passing residential homes and various businesses...and a Trout farm, we finally pulled onto the Interstate.
   It was about ten o’clock when we reached our destination.  We were tired and worn out enough that we turned in quickly.  Tomorrow will be another busy day of uncertainty!