Well, we're on a new segment of the trip, slower and into new country. The rush of getting out here was a little stressful, both on me and on the car.
We got into downtown Asheville for a while on Wednesday, poking around on our way to pick up the trailer in Hendersonville, where we had some minor repairs made. We stopped for a while in Pack Square, which has some beautiful old buildings around it. We were both amazed at the griffins extending way out from the corners of the Jackson Building ... made us wonder about earthquakes and to stay away from those corners!
There and in Battery Park, where Noi is office manager for several companies, we got to see the street singers, vendors, coffee-drinkers, etc., that are the street life she has written so glowingly about. Very pleasant ambience!
Thursday we started up the Blue Ridge Parkway, stopping first at the Folk Art Center, pictured above the view of Lucas, Aiden, Noi, Nola Jane and Sandy around the trampoline. It is a beautiful center, wonderful venue for the works of 200 artists and I can see why my boss in Harpers Ferry, Art Allen, became so involved with it after he retired in Asheville.
The trip up the parkway was ... interesting. The views are not those of the west, where I regularly bitch about the encroaching haze, but the trees and vistas are interesting. At one point, around 5,000 feet above sea level near the Mount Mitchell State Park turnoff, there were still a few patches of dirty snow on shaded, north-facing roadsides.
In several places, there were contract tree crews cutting up and chipping recently downed trees and we had to get off the parkway on Route 80 because the road was blocked by fallen trees further on up. We learned later that there had been an ice storm recently that damaged the forest severely, something Sandy had already figured out from her central OK experience.
I was disappointed that the NPS hadn't given us earlier notification that the parkway was closed, but it worked out for the best. The surface of the parkway is in poor condition (LOTS of roadwork going on!) and the views were getting a bit repetitive, so we got down off the mountain and traveled through Micaville, Spruce Pine, etc. Stopped for lunch at a Forest Service campground on the Toe River, where there's fresh greenery coming out and an ol' swimmin' hole in the river.
We had no particular schedule (have to be in Winchester, VA, Saturday), so we thought we'd head for Boone, NC. Sandy put "Boone, NC" into the TomTom GPS device and we moseyed on. All went well until, in the little crossroads of Plumtree, NC, just after we had commented on the interesting cafe and rooming house, TomTom said "Turn right." Well, we pretty soon decided TomTom had led us onto a road that maybe folks with a camper trailer shouldn't be on!
Just as we were pondering our course at a fork where we could turn around, two women hiking along the road caught up with us and asked if we were headed for "their" campground. We, of course, had no idea there was even a campground up that road, but we heard more about it and then decided to check it out. A little further, we were again pondering directions at a fork in the road and two guys in a pickup truck pulled up and told us to just keep on going, we were almost at the turnoff to the campground.
We reached the turnoff ... a fairly steep gravel drive ... and gave it a try. We were greeted by a fellow who said he was the sous chef at the restaurant but he would call someone to give us information about the campground.
All in all, it was one of those "way will open," "let go and let God" experiences. We just spent the night at The Vance Toe River Lodge campground, part of a complex that includes a B&B lodge, the cafe, a brewery, a winery, a zip-line canopy tours experience, a trout hatchery, blooming forsythia and azaleas, a youth camp and the friendliest work-campers we could imagine. One of the ladies we first contacted walking along the road came by as we were setting up and gave us four fresh brown eggs she had just pulled out from under the chickens! We ate supper in the evening on our little private deck above a bank of azaleas and walked up the stream past the yurts and the climbing wall and the zip lines and the disc golf course.
We covered less than 100 miles yesterday; we'll have to do a little better today, but what a wonderful interlude and break in our travels! tv
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