A Drive On The "Parkway", Two Dinners, Saying Good-by and A Little Shopping

Marion, NC.

61 deg. mostly clear, no wind.

Forecast = Mixed clouds and sun this morning. Scattered thunderstorms developing this afternoon. High 82F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40%.


After Linda woke up and had her breakfast, Wednesday morning, the discussion of what she and Jim were going to do came up and even though the weather looked "iffy", they decided to take Big RED and head up to the Blue Ridge Parkway.  Once up there the weather turned out to be really nice with mixed sun and clouds with the temperatures in the low to mid 70;s.

Jim decided to take NC Rt. 80 up there and Big RED said that it was an "interesting" drive with most of it being a very narrow 2 land road with lots of steep hills, curves and switch-backs all along the route. :-O  Once up on the "Parkway" though, the road was wider with fewer hills and curves and Big RED said that he really enjoyed the drive. :-)

There are places that you can pull off of the parkway that are called "Scenic Overlooks" and one of the first ones they came to was this Black Mountain Overlook. The photos don't really show it, but I understand that it was a long way down to the bottom of the valley and it was very pretty.

Just before they exited the Blue Ridge Parkway, they came upon a Motorcycle accident. It looked like the cycle had run off the road at a curve. There were other cyclist attending to the injured man, but Jim was able to use the GPS to tell them exactly where they were on the Parkway so they could inform the 911 operator that they had called. It didn't look like the driver was hurt too bad, but one of the other cyclist said that he had a lot of "road rash" and was bleeding pretty bad. :-(

I hope he'll be OK, His beautiful full-dress motorcycle didn't look to good though. :-(

After they returned, Jim took a nap and Linda did some more embroidery work.

Around 6:00 Jim and Linda headed over to the pavilion where they had a tasty meal of hamburgers, hot dogs mac and cheese all the fixin's and a brownie for desert. It was served buffet style, so you could pick and choose what you wanted. Then after eating they headed over to the bonfire that Howard had just lit and sat and talked until it started getting "buggy" and chilly.

Yesterday, Jim and Linda were sitting out under the awhing talking to Pat and Jim from next door when Linda Payne, stopped by for a little while and joined the conversation. That was nice and unexpected because she and Howard have so much "Rally Stuff" to do to keep everything going smoothly.

After lunch, Jim and Linda took Big RED and headed over to the Tom Johnson RV Center store where Jim bought a new fitting for his sewer hose. It's the one that screws into the fitting at the CG and the old one he's using now is getting all weathered from age. He's afraid that one of these days it's just going to fall apart.

For dinner, Jim and Linda decided to go out to eat. Dennis and Char had told them about a place called "FATZ" that they had been to, so they headed over there and had excellent fish and chips meals at a very reasonable price. :-)

By the time they returned here to the park, it had started to rain off and on, so they came inside and watched TV.

A little later, Dennis and Char stopped by to say good-by. They're needing to head back down to Texas where they work-camp at a State Park, and will be leaving early this morning. It was really nice of them to stop by. It's too bad that they had to leave the Rally early. Jim and Linda have really enjoyed seeing them again.

Hopefully we'll be seeing them again some day.

Not much planned for today. Big RED needs a drink of that good old #2 diesel fuel and Linda has a letter ready to mail, so I suppose they'll do those things.

Did you know that the Blue Ridge Parkway is America's longest linear park and covers a distance of 469 miles?

Woof!!!