Just had to include this shot of the Pisgah Inn from the parkway, showing the backside of it. I wish we could have stayed a couple more nights, but it just wasn't in our budget, alas.This is a blog of my five-week exploration of culinary experiences in North Carolina. Baaswell Sheep is accompanying me and offering his own commentary on the trip, although he refuses to go into any place that serves lamb chops.
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Every long trip is going to have it's good days, its bad days, and its mediocre days. I'll classify this one as just below mediocre. We had a rough time coming down off the Parkway into Brevard to detour the closed section of the Parkway. Besides being a winding descent, there was heavy traffic and cyclists in the way (cyclists wonder why people don't want to support cycling, but when they refuse to move over into one of a dozen paved pull-overs and instead insist on slowing up traffic on a winding mountain road, well, that's why.). Then, we had a rough time finding someplace to eat. We finally got fed, but forgot to get gas, which made things a little nerve wracking as we were heading back up onto the Parkway (we had 70 miles-to-empty, but I wasn't so sure about how quickly we'd find a station along the Parkway, though my companion insisted we only had something like 40 miles to the end near Cherokee. We got to the Parkway and found it covered in moderate fog, but we made the most of it and got a few patches of clearer weather, and I felt a lot better after we detoured down towards Waynesville to fill up the tank. After that, we did a rather strenuous hike, found thick fog at the top, but hung around and the fog cleared enough to get to enjoy a pretty decent view. After that, it was all downhill, with rain the rest of the way into Cherokee, so we didn't get to watch a sunset as we'd hoped. We got to our hotel in Franklin, North Carolina so late that we just grabbed some food from the Ingles next door and ate in the hotel.
Just had to include this shot of the Pisgah Inn from the parkway, showing the backside of it. I wish we could have stayed a couple more nights, but it just wasn't in our budget, alas.
Subway does tend to be my companion's go-to-in-a-pinch restaurant. This time he tried a chicken salad wrap, having them put their special chipolte sauce on it. He said it was pretty good. I just ate one of his raspberry cookies.
Our last Blue Ridge Parkway hike for this trip, we stopped at the last visitor's center and followed the rather steep trail all the way to the peak of Waterrock Knob. Let me emphasize 'steep' – even the lower part that is paved is quite steep, which might be surprising to visitors who'd expect a paved trail to be for everyday people. From that lower view point there's a natural trail that goes on up to the peak. We got there and there was fog everywhere, but we had plenty of time, so we hung around and the fog started to clear – not completely, but enough that we got to see some great views and get some good pictures, too. The three pictures on the second row below show the progression of fog clearing. The last picture on the first row shows the Blue Ridge Parkway in the distance below us. We finally went back down to find it had been raining below us, and was still lightly raining in the parking lot.
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