the blue ridge parkway...

 The Blue Ridge Parkway is America's favorite scenic drive.

So we were told...

and now we know why.

It is a 469 mile scenic drive that follows the highest ridges of the Appalachians between the Shenandoah and Great Smokey Mountain National Parks.

And I'm thinking we picked the absolute perfect time to drive the Parkway!

I like green...

but nothing beats the colourful foliage of autumn.

At Milepost 61 of our drive...

we paid a visit to The Natural Bridge.  

Twenty stories tall, one hundred feet wide and forty feet thick...

 Virginia's immense Natural Bridge is a National Historic Landmark

 shaped by Mother Nature over thousands of years.

Once owned by Thomas Jefferson...
and said to have been surveyed by a young George Washington
...the Natural Bridge is a window into the American past.

Though the Natural Bridge can be viewed for free from above (it is part of US Highway 11)...

one needs a ticket to hike down the trail and along Cedar Creek...

...the lazy creek that can be credited with carving through the limestone terrain...

to form the gorge.

 The Blue Ridge Parkway follows the crest of the mountains through the far western edge of North Carolina.

Who knew we would find rugged peaks...

and many deep valleys?

The stone guard walls along this section of road were most impressive!

Apparently they were constructed in the 1930's...

and many have recently been rebuilt.

Our guidebook says the Blue Ridge Parkway...

 'is a high road of adventure,

intended for gypsy-like travel on the ride-awhile-stop-awhile basis.'

We made good gypsies...

and stopped often!

Sometimes just for a picture of an old barn!

And sometimes to read the historic markers.

Who knew that 'Hang down your head, Tom Dooley'...

was based on a real-life story that happened right here?

We also stopped at Blowing Rock...

and at Linville Falls.

I'll take you there another day.

If one picture tells a thousand words...

I'll leave you six more.

Like I said...

we couldn't have picked a better time to do that drive!

I had no idea we would be climbing to an elevation of more than 6,000 feet.

The higher we climbed...

the cooler it got.

Soon there was ice beside the road...

and then we reached snow.

As long as it was just on the trees...

and not on the road...

it was all good!

We passed by Little Switzerland...

and then on to Asheville...

a mountain resort made famous by the Vanderbilt family.

And that is where we parted ways with the Blue Ridge Parkway...

and took a road more traveled into South Carolina.

Have a great weekend!

from maryland to monticello and mount cheam...

We were reunited with our motor home in Pennsylvania on a Sunday...

a day later than planned due to flight cancellations...

and decided we would 'hit the road' immediately.

We headed south...

planning to travel the Blue Ridge Parkway through the Appalachians.

After a few hours...

I could barely keep my eyes open.

That's OK for the passenger...

but the driver was having trouble staying awake as well.

That's what happens after a red-eye flight.

Just about that time we saw a KOA sign...

and so we stopped in Williamsport, Maryland by mid-afternoon.

After a bit of a 'Sunday afternoon nap'...

we went for a walk.

There were dairy farms and rivers to check out.

I thought Golden Lea Lane was the perfect name for the road we strolled along...

with the setting sun turning the corn fields into a sea of gold!
Merryland...indeed!

In the morning we carried on...

through West Virginia and into Virginia...
 where visited Shenandoah National Park.

Could there be a better time than October to visit?

We spent the night in Charlottesville, Virginia...

...and visited the Meadow Run Mill and General Store nearby.

It is housed within the Meadow Run Gristmill circa 1797.

Nothing is that old where I come from!

Next door was the Michie Tavern that has welcomed guests for more than 200 years.  

Though I wasn't much interested in joining the bus tour hordes for a meal in the tavern...

I quite enjoyed a walk about the grounds where the buildings from yesteryear were blanketed in leaves.

The gristmill and tavern are situated in the valley just below Thomas Jefferson's home...

Monticello.

We had thought we might just do a 'drive-by' of Monticello...

rather than actually doing a tour.

But this was all we could see from the road...

a long and winding driveway through the trees.

We had come this far...

so we decided to drive up that winding lane...
and take the tour.

And we were glad we did!

The house was designed and built by Jefferson over a period of forty years...

and holds many of the gadgets he invented.

Things like the double-pen device that made a copy of everything he wrote.

Brilliant! 

Born in 1743. Died in 1826.

Thomas Jefferson lies buried at Monticello...
on the grounds which were part of a large plantation worked by slaves back in the day.

It is a wonderful and most interesting historical place...

so worth touring!

Close to Charlottesville, Virginia lies the north entrance to the Blue Ridge Parkway.
 And that will be my next 'milepost' along the journey.

I'll leave you with one image of the here-and-now.

I couldn't resist an i-phone photo of Mt.Cheam with her new crown of snow...

taken as I paid a visit to our accountant...

out Rosedale way yesterday.

Have a wonderful Wednesday!

road trip usa ~ how it all began...

The year was 1971 and we had been married only a few months...when we took our first lengthy road trip. We celebrated our first Christmas together in our new-to-us home, then packed the car and headed south for California. The trip through Washington, Oregon and on to Los Angeles took us two days. We spent the first night in a Motel 6 in Redding, California...and then stayed with my uncle and aunt in West Covina (LA area) for the rest of our vacation. We did Disneyland, Knott's Berry Farm and took in the Rose Bowl Parade on January 1, 1972. On the trip home...



...we traveled north along the coast, visiting Hearst Castle and spending a night in Monterey. We so enjoyed that first road trip, we decided then and there that we would take many more in the years to come. We thought we might even buy an El Camino one day...
 

 (El Camino that we spotted in California a few weeks ago.)

...and do an extensive road trip of the USA. Wouldn't that be fun? We could drive where we wanted and sleep in the back (we were envisioning one with a canopy). Why...that would be much more economical than Motel Six! :)

And that is how the dream of seeing all of the US states was was first hatched...over four decades ago. We hadn't really factored in how children might affect our plans...and so things never unfolded quite as we envisioned so long ago. But the idea never quite died...and now we can say, 'we did it!' From that first road trip in 1971 to our entry into the last state (Kansas) on October 31 of this year, many changes occurred. We took a few road trips with our children, but mostly we carried on with our 'road trip usa' once our kids left home.

The following is an overview of the many trips involved over the years that eventually led us to complete our goal of driving in each of the 50 states.

1971...Washington, Oregon, California 

(Photo at Hearst Castle ~ Jan 2, 1972)

 1973 ~ Florida

(We toured Florida in a rented Pinto following a missions trip to Haiti)

1977~ Hawaii

(The Hawaiian sunsets are timeless!)

1977 ~ Nevada, Idaho (along with Washington, Oregon and California)

 (in our pick-up and camper with a two and four-year-old)

 
1986 ~ Iowa We flew to Iowa for my brother's wedding and rented a car.

(this was not our rental vehicle!)

1988 ~ Texas We flew to south Texas with Kris, Jeremy and Heidi to visit my sister and her boys.

(photo at the Alamo, San Antonio)

1999 ~ Alaska We drove to Alaska with our Swiss friends, Pierre and Ute.

(an Alaskan rainbow framing our rental motor home)

2005 ~ Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Minnesota, Illinois, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Utah. We finally made the long road trip out to visit my brother Bill and his family in Iowa...and visited many sites along the way.

(our first visit to Yellowstone)

2007 ~ Arizona  After thirty years, we traded our camper in for a small motor home. 

(our first major trip with the new RV)

2010 ~ Colorado, New Mexico

(Garden of the Gods ~ Colorado)

2012 ~ Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama   We flew to Houston and did a driving tour of the gulf coast in a rental car.

(Gulfport, Mississippi)

And that takes us to this year...with 28 states left to visit.  This summer we were in North Dakota, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, New York , Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine,

(Acadia National Park, Maine)

Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware and Pennsylvania.

That left 11 states...and those are the ones we paid a visit to on our last leg of the journey this fall.  West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma ...

...and last (but not least) Kansas!

 

We did it.  We 'coloured' in every state!  That doesn't mean we won't be crossing that border ever again.  There are plenty of places still left to visit...and re-visit.  But maybe we should finish 'colouring' in the Canadian provinces first.  We have yet to visit New Brunswick and PEI.  Maybe one day!

So that is how our Road Trip USA unfolded...bit by bit...over four decades.  I'll be sharing some of our most recent adventures with you over the next few weeks...but thought I'd give you a little of the history behind our 'road-tripping' experiences first. 

Have a great day!