I write this as I sit lounging on yet another Appalachian Porch. During the day, this porch looks like this:
You can't really see the mountains in this picture, but they are there and stunning. Of course, I can't really see them now, because it's 10:20 at night and pitch black outside. But the weather is perfect, the company is lovely, and the mood is light. Life is good my friends! Oscar too finds this quite the lovely end to quite the lovely day.
Our day began with the trek from Abingdon a bit southeast to the pleasant town of Bristol. One of the cool things about Bristol is half the city is in Virginia and the other half in Tennessee. And State Street which runs through the center of town runs through the border. Buildings on one side of the street are in one state and the other side in another. How crazy cool is that!?!? Well, we went specifically looking for this sign at the base of State Street. It made for a great photo op for Oscar:
The only issue with going out of our way to go to Bristol is that the route out of Bristol to our next stop is quite the winding road. It's a darn good thing neither Oscar nor I get car sick. Otherwise this could have been a very ugly ending. I tried multiple times to get good shots of the windiness of these roads, but the windiest parts had no place to pull over, so the only shots I got were like this:
This is not even close to the windiest of these roads. The cool part was in between two mountains, just as you're about to get sick of driving these curves you come out upon a pleasant place aptly enough named Shady Valley. It looks like a painting come to life. I sadly enough did not get any pictures of that because as soon as I got over how pretty it was I was driving up another mountain!
Fortunately, I "borrowed" a ton of music from Kathi before leaving Abingdon. Most of it was very folksy and bluegrassy. It was such a perfect compliment to our drive through the mountains. It was literally like the mountains were singing to us at one point in time!
Along this winding road, we entered into North Carolina. While were at this border, we went ahead and took the Tennessee picture since we didn't really get a proper sign picture in Bristol, so here are those:
After driving through this for about 60 miles, we arrived in Boone, NC. We were going to stop for lunch but traffic was hella crazy! The plan was to get on the Blue Ridge Parkway (scenic route central), so I thought I would get something to eat there. What I didn't realize was that Blue Ridge Parkway is more or less like driving through a state park. There are no stops for food!
This was a 96 mile run through the mountains, so it took about 3 hours. I was so famished at one point in time I had to stop and dig through my car and find something to eat. The best I came up with were some old pop tarts, but I was so famished they were delicious! But here are some shots from the Parkway. It's just so darn lovely up there. I don't know that Appalachia could get any prettier if it tried!
Arriving in Asheville is always a treat because it means I get to wrap my arms around the neck of one Mr. Travis Proffitt!
Travis and I spent some time catching up and then hit the streets to see what wonderful things Asheville had to offer tonight. And we were not let down! The night included a street festival, a drum circle, and beverages and dessert sitting under the stars! And now we conclude the evening on the porch! What a wonderful day!
Tomorrow, more Asheville adventures!
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