Blue Ridge Parkway

Mable's Mill

We continued down the Blue Ridge Parkway. We're amazed at how little traffic we’ve encountered. In the last two days, I’ve only pulled over three times to let other cars pass. Most people seem to take only a small portion of the parkway to see particular sights. I guess we’re doing the unusual thing by taking all 400 miles. Today, the road was not quite as up and down. The flowers are colorful on the sides of the road, lots of black-eyed-susan, yarrow, milkweed, and an orange flower we have yet to identify. Unfortunately, most of the flowers occur along portions of the road where we can’t stop, so I have yet to grab a picture. We stopped for lunch at Mable’s Mill, with its water powered mill  stones.


The best stop of the day was the Blue Ridge Music Center at the border of Virginia and North Carolina. Every afternoon during the summer they have a band playing blue grass and country music. We had a few people demonstrate their dance to the tunes and a young boy was coaxed into joining in with his fiddle since he had just spent the weekend in fiddling camp. It was a fun time. There is also a museum here explaining the Blue Ridge music traditions with some home-made instruments. Further down the road, we stopped for a short hike to the Cascades. Actually, I thought the cascades were more of a water fall than a cascade at least as viewed from the top. We reached at campsite at Linville Falls about 6:30. I had hoped to hike to the falls, but it was dark by the time we finished dinner.

Fox Hunter's Paradise