Adventure time

 August 12, 2021

Ashville East KOA, Swannanoa, NC

Dad said to think 'thin' as we backed into our site.  We are situated on our site so our left slide just misses the electric post and our right side awning just misses our neighbors electric post and sewer connection.  We didn't have neighbors on our door side when we arrived, but they slid into their site after I had my late night 'last-call walk'.  We have a tree to our rear giving us some shade and now that the door side Class A neighbor has arrived, they are shading us as well.  I guess there are advantages to having large sized neighbors.

Aunt Carol and Uncle Steve have some friends in this area so they met us for lunch at Thirteen Pennies Cafe in Black Mountain.  She  is involved with the visitor center so she was a great resource for us with info on the area.  

We decided to take a ride to the highest point east of the Mississippi, Mount Mitchell at 6,684;  part of the Black Mountain range.  Uncle Steve was behind the wheel navigating using ....not one...but two GPS...plus he had printed a map of the route.  

I guess his GPS knew that with the whole afternoon ahead of us, there was lots of time to take an adventure.  The trip began on a nice paved road that suddenly turned into an unpaved road....that got narrower...and narrower....as we headed deeper into the forest ....without any cell service. The posted signage said end of maintained road.   Are you humming a few bars of that famous dueling banjo tune from the movie Deliverance? Dad was!!  Then the road was joined together by a very n-a-r-r-o-w (they called it one lane..cow lane maybe) bridge that allowed us to cross over the gurgling water.  The BIG dually silver beast JUST navigated the bridge.

And we wound our way at 15 miles per hour following the narrow roadway/path that crossed the babbling water several times.

It wasn't always trees on the side of the road.  The rocks had been carved into as the road climbed to a high elevation.

And then it appeared, 

The end of our 'short cut'...which may have been the shortest route to the Blueridge Parkway, but it certainly wasn't the fastest.... or smoothest. 

As we approached the first scenic outlook ....well....let's just say the scene wasn't very outlook friendly with all the fog and rain that found it's way to our location.  Who turned that wet cloud loose?

So we headed further up the road 

Until we finally drove out of the rain and into some actual views.

Our lunch companions had mentioned that they had a bear in their yard that morning so we had been on the lookout for some wildlife while on the 'shortcut'.  The sum total of our wildlife sighting was 3 turkeys.  Can you see them?

Well, obviously they weren't in the mood for a photo opp.

It was unanimous, no one voted to return to our campground via our 'short cut', narrow, rough road path.  We tooled further southwest on the Blue Ridge Parkway and made our way via Hwy 70.... a well maintained highway.   Yep, it was an adventure!!