155 The Blue Ridge Parkway

I've just looked at this, sorry you need to go to the bottom of the page and work upwards, we have been having problems with the computer and yesterday  we didn't have a very good internet signal.

Thursday 2nd May 2013  Miles Today 186   Total  1981

Unfortunately, last night, we found a motel and believe me, it was only missing the banjo player on the porch.  We survived the night, although the weirdest thing happened, at 4.20am the phone in our room started ringing.  It woke us both up and when Ray answered it, the line went dead.  Spooky or just the previous occupant had set up an alarm call, me, I'm going with "lets wind the Brits up"..  

Anyway we got away in one piece and headed onto the Blue Ridge mountain pass.
Again very beautiful and wonderful roads for motorcycling.

Our first wildlife encounter was with a turkey vulture.

You can tell by his face why he is called Turkey vulture.

As we went higher the trees had no buds or foliage

 

Lower down, more greenery

Back up, and desolation!

The roads are a motorcyclists dream, long winding bends, flipping from side to side, and as a passenger, I have absolutely loved it.  On the Skyline we were restricted to 35mph as it is a national park.  We had stopped yesterday at the only little pit stop open at this time of year, - it is early season here and most of the nature reserves and the campsites are still closed, they have just got rid of their snow-  there was a sign stating that 60 to 100 deer are killed in the park.  what was more interesting to me, was that in 1934 all the deer had been wiped out, so 13 were brought in, and now 6000 deer later, all of them have descended from those, with apparently a few stragglers who made it over the boarder, helping the flock.  From the previous pictures you can see that they are tagged.

 Today, we were able to move slightly faster, which made it easier for Ray, and after a couple of hours, we stopped for some lunch. 

 This is a lovely little shop owned by a woman who has her own orchard, and iIt was funny because we were still excited about seeing the bears, she laughed because she has one everyday in her orchard eating the apples and she's not allowed to do anything about it. Apparently they are protected, but they seem to do a lot of damage.

But before we got in the shop, we were greeted by a couple, called Scott and Cindy, who firstly were interested in our bike, and then suggested a couple of places we should visit .

Wallace outside the fabulous little shop.

 Once inside the shop, the lady proprietor, showed us a selection of local foods, gave us tasters and then when we had purchased what we wanted, we sat out in the garden, she brought out her own recipe, deep fried apple pie and home made apple ice cream for us to taste, strange as it all sounds, it was delicious and so if you ever are in this part of the world, visit here and have the pie and ice cream....

Nearly missed it with the camera, but this is a "lolly pop" crossing patrol with their own vehicle. Don't let the Lollypop ladies of Britain know, they could have a car!

This is the winery that we were told by Scot and Cindy to visit, 

We had a couple of tastes of wine and bought a bottle of sweet for Ray and a dry for me.  It was quite funny as there was a family group tasting wine to the left of us and they had a couple of boxer dogs with them, and on our right was a young couple, he was out to impress the girl, well unfortunately, one of the boxer dogs had a big, brown accident, and it stank.  The poor husband had to run around dealing with it, the young girl beside us , couldn't taste the wine because she was in tears from the smell.  A wine tasting has never been so much fun, we had to laugh and hope no one new walked in as they wouldn't have bought any wine.
We left there and found a fabulous little hotel in the middle of no where and settled in for the night.  We were able to get dinner  and there were no banjo's and it really is lovely.  I can bird watch for as long as I like. 

Blue Jay from the hotel dinning room

Humming bird, I couldn't believe they were in this part of America, and it is only about 2 inches big, this photo is more luck than anything else.

Tomorrow, we continue along the parkway.  We have been lucky with the weather the last two days, it has been reasonably warm and very sunny, lets hope we can continue this way.