Day Twentyeight - Jul 10, 2004

Blowing Rock, NC to Lexington, VA

High Point: Brian - All day on the Blue Ridge Parkway Theresa - Reading her new book in camp

Low Point: Brian & Theresa - The heat and humidity down in the lowlands

Miles By Automobile: 298

Miles Total: 7506

Price Per Gallon: 1.81

Today's Weather: Sunny, overcast, rainy and in the 70's on the Parkway. Insanely hot in Mayberry.

Tonight's Lodging: Natural Bridge KOA

Where Uploaded: Washington, DC

Wildlife: Cows, deer, wild turkeys

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.