Blue Ridge Parkway

August 16, 2009

I am looking forward to the day when I can write in this blog and the title will be something other than "Blue Ridge Parkway". I hope to be at Great Smokey Mountains by the end of the week!!! I'm not sure how different that will be since it is basically an extension of Blue Ridge but I'll let you know.

Today was a pretty good day it started out with thick fog so that took about an hour off of our morning and it ended with the typical afternoon showers. We did manage to collect about 103 miles today which is pretty good when you have to go 35 mph or slower. We had to collect a section of parkway that was closed to the public. We didn't know why it was closed but we soon found out that it was because of a massive rock slide. It was really cool to stand there an look at it...a photo does not do it justice.

We had to GPS a parking lot this morning, or what the park service wants to call a parking lot. Really? When the majority of the surface is grass growing up through old asphalt I think it is time to repave or let go. I attached a photo. There were plenty of bugs hanging out in the "parking lot" though. Spiders, bees, caterpillars and other things I'm sure I don't want to know about. I attached a photo of a caterpillar that decided to take a ride on Jeff or the GPS unit on his back and it ended up in our truck.