Daily Didactic
We awoke in the largely named Julian Price Memorial Campground and tooled up the Parkway for a few miles to gas up in the small town of Blowing Rock. Blowing Rock is so named because they have a rock east of town that regularly has updrafts blow things up past it. This has been enough to keep Blowing Rock on the map for over 200 years and they claim the distinction of being Virginia's oldest tourist attraction. It cost six bucks a head to see the rock, so we passed and got a sandwich instead. A very nice quaint little community, just a little steep for a rock with an updraft.

We spent the next couple of hours winding up the Parkway, with lots of "that's pretty" and "look at that"s, until Brian lead a dive off of the ridge for the border town of Mt. Airy. Mt. Airy is the boyhood home of Andy Griffith and, reportedly, the inspiration for Mayberry. We now guess that was probably true 60 years ago, but today it's really just a fair sized town with a main street trying to sell Mayberry souveniers. A little underwhelmed, and very very hot, we climbed back up to the ridgeline and enjoyed another few hours of Parkway bobbing and weaving. We pulled into the Otter Creek campground, which seemed to be nestled inside a very damp cloud, for the night. After getting a bite to eat and reconsidering, we dove back off of the ridge toward the town of Lexington and decided to call the Natural Bridge KOA home for the evening.

Daily Pictures (Slide Show)

Morning in the Julian Price Campground, just outside of Blowing Rock		Blowing Rock claims this. Can we really have two contintental divides?
Old Appalachian church		Mountain tops vista
Cows on the move		Blue Ridge road shot
Old Appalachian cabin and out building. Formerly habitated by mountain people, now by Park Service interpreters		Rhododendron shrub
Plants are not to scale		Brian grows weary of the paparazzi
Parkway bridge		On the road to Mt. Airy
Mayberry Square, really just turns out to be Main Street		Floyd's, not big on business, was actually open
Virginia welcomes us		Well rolled hay bales
Country side shot		Intersecting with the Appalachian Trail
Mist rises up the hillside and over the road		Deer at dusk, after a rain

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