Thursday, January 3, 2019

Thankful Thursday - Mountain Trip


My map man


I'm really thankful for our holidays in December -- both Hanukkah and Christmas.  And we had a quiet party for two on New Year's Eve.  We even stayed up till midnight and had a champagne toast.  The next day, we watched the UCF - LSU game and were sad when UCF lost.  They had a two-year winning streak.  We are so proud of those guys.

I'm very late in sharing posts about our trip to the mountains, so I'll try to catch up this week and next.

After our visit to Hiawassee, we headed for the Blue Ridge Parkway.  Would you believe I thought it was an expressway? Absolutely not, Gail-Friends!  It's a two-lane highway through the Great Smoky Mountains.  And it was here that we saw the most beautiful fall color.  Here are a few photos:


In the photo above it looks like snow or ice, but what you see is smoke or perhaps fog.  It was beautiful.

As we drove north, we saw more colorful trees:



The Parkway is a long and winding two-lane road that winds around the mountains.  The views were gorgeous and I took lots of photos that just don't do them justice.  Here are just a few:

I see why they call it the "blue" ridge parkway.


This was the highest point and it was very misty as you can see.  We were in the clouds, Gail-Friends.


We went through about a half-dozen tunnels.  These fascinated me since we don't have tunnels in Florida.

We saw several cyclists.  You have to admire them because there were some challenging heights to conquer.




As we drove close to the Great Smoky Mountain visitor center, we saw this:



A big elk and his female.  And closer up we saw this young one.



After we visited the center, we drove back by the field and saw a huge herd of them.  We also saw deer and a few turkeys along the way.


 The herd was pretty close to the road and people were stopping to take photos.


After our ride on the parkway, we headed east and drove through Maggie Valley, N.C.  This brought back sweet memories for me as this is where my family vacationed every summer during my childhood.

Our next stop was Flat Rock, North Carolina to visit the St. Johns in the Wilderness Episcopal Church.  I'll write about that next week because this post is getting long.  We went there to do research for the book Rabbi Jem is writing.  I'm looking forward to sharing our interesting discoveries with Y'all.



Who knew you could actually have a good time in a graveyard?  I'm so thankful for a husband who makes everything fun.

I'll be sharing about our visit to the Cradle of Forestry, Chimney Rock, Charleston, and our visit with our dear, old friends Carlleen and Eddy.  Seeing them was one of the best parts of our trip and I'm so thankful we had that good visit.

What are you thankful for this week, Gail-Friends?  

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