Last of Blue Ridge photos

These cover the final section up to the Smoky Mountains.  I wish you could see all the ridges in the pictures, but the pollution is so bad that half of them are hidden to the camera.  They can be seen with the naked eye though.

I talked to some guys who were riding their motorcycles from the north end of the Shenandoah - Skyline Drive, to the entire Blue Ridge Parkway - probably 600+ miles.  They were astounded at the scenery as they are from the midwest (one fellow mentioned he was from Wisconsin, which is beautiful in its own right!)  The Appalachian chain of mountains is thought to be the oldest in the world, and were once higher than the Himalayas!  They have aged gracefully, I'd say, over millenia of erosion.  (Click a photo to enlarge.)

My GPS gives me fits.  I was trying to get to a motel but was led to a dead end industrial location.  The road I've been following since Cherokee, NC is a 4-lane highway, with a center lane for turns.  After all the days of driving at a slower pace on a 2-lane twisty-turny road, you'd think I would like this, but I don't.  I miss the scenery around every bend.

I ate a late breakfast in Cherokee, and was so happy to taste good grits, gravy, and biscuits again!  

I get an email every day from the "Daily Ray of Hope" - it features a beautiful photograph plus a quote or poem that can relate.  I thought today's verse is so pertinent to my life that it probably relates to a few others as well:

Though outwardly a gloomy shroud,
The inner half of every cloud
Is bright and shining:
I therefore turn my clouds about
And always wear them inside out
To show the lining.

~ Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
 
I wish I could honestly say I turn my clouds inside out - sometimes I just wallow in the gloom.

I'm taking at least a 2-day stop tomorrow, so I can relax and take it easy.  It seems like I've been taking it pretty easy all along, but with a zero-day-and-a-half, I'll be totally mellowed out!

There is something else I wanted to mention (for the past couple of days) but I keep forgetting.  By the time I remember at the same time I'm writing the blog, it won't matter any more!