Woke up this morning to the first sunny day in about 2 weeks. When Peg & I turned on the Weather Channel to check out the forecast, they had just turned the segment over to a local commentator who indicated there was very rough weather in “Byu-mont,” TX which I can only surmise was her pronunciation of Beaumont. We truly do have a variety of languages and dialects in this country although, until recently, I had assumed we mostly spoke English.
We drove into Lenore or Lenoir and cozied up in a Waffle House. Peg had some Waffle House free food cards that had been given to us by Gary down in Greenville, SC. A short trip to a B of A to get some cash, a side-trip to get diesel and then we were on our way. It seemed like a perfect day to take another trip up to the Blue Ridge Parkway since the pundits on the Weather Channel said we could expect clear conditions. They were correct, in this case.
We started driving up Hwy 321 which passes about 2 miles from our camping spot and continued until we reached the Parkway at Blowing Rock. We could see quite a few things which were completely shrouded by fog yesterday but, mysteriously, we were still unable to find the Tweetsie Railroad probably through a total lack of effort. We started our tour today by going east. We found that this section of the Parkway is at not quite as high an elevation as the section we drove yesterday. However, the overlooks along the road are still quite gorgeous and the superb weather gave us views of a horizon that must have been about 90 miles away.
Only cattle, a few crows and one ground hog in the animal count today. We continued on the Parkway to a town called Laurel Springs where we turned down Hwy 18 to North Wilkesboro, on to Wilkesboro and then west back to Lenoir or Lenore.