Day 11 May 22nd Blue Ridge

Our 7am departure was right on Ashlock Time! We pulled out of our hotel at 11:27 am on the dot!
But in all fairness we were trying to leave earlier. We didnt have much laundry so we declined Uncle D's offer to use his laundry facilties and opted to use the small coin op at our hotel instead since we just had a very small load. That was our first mistake. We put the load in the washer before dinner, figuring it would be done before we got back, on a 25 min wash cycle. 3 1/2 hours later when we returned, it was stuck on the last 5 mins of the cycle and with our luck, it wasn't stuck on the final spin cycle because that would mean our clothes were fairly dry, but rather it was stuck on final rinse which meant we had to hand ring every piece of laundry before putting it in the dryer. This also means that every 3 hours Clint would get up, go to the top floor of the hotel to the laundry room and feel if our clothes were dry (they were of course still wet). This meant he would have to drop more coins in the dryer before returning to bed for another 3 hours. we turned the dryer on a total of 4 times so this made us way behind schedule. This delayed our departure seeing as we can't pack wet clothes into our bags, and we can't pack the car without our bags. But the bags are now packed and the itty bitty neon is full again.. and of course Clint says we have to say "did we mention our goodies?"
Did we also mention that Lauren loves buying coffee mugs... and that the racoons are not working fast enough to get rid of stuff?
We headed out of civilization, and I think Clint is excited because he knows he can say the critters are streamlining our camping gear but I still know better. His racoon stories are not fooling me
So now we are on the road and by the time we ate, dropped off post cards, and left town, it was noon.
There's nothing wrong with leaving at noon, but the problem comes when you realize at noon you were planning on being in your next spot by 12:30 and you still have 6 hours of driving left. And the speed limit on the Skyline drive is only 35 mph... do the math... YAY
But the actual driving was great. Well if you ask Lauren, the driving was horrible and the look out points were great, where you actually stop the car and stop driving on these incredibly scary roads built on the sides of mountains.
I could sum up our whole day of driving with one very fragmented sentance: "we drove, we pulled over, Lauren said Clint get away from the ledge, we got back into the car that Lauren parked 12 feet from the curb because that curb is too close to the drop off of the side of a mountain for her comfort". And we have pictures of this parking job as well
let us tell you some of the history of the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Skyline drive. It was a public works project designed to boost jobs and the economy after the Great Depression. It spans the entire Blue Ridge Mountains from Virginia through North Carolina, to Tennesee. It was meant to link Virginia and the upper parts to the Great Smoky Moutain National Park and the southern regions of the US, obviously before the larger highways were built. It was an amazing task at that time and still would be today. It is literally built on top of the mountains or on the side winding from mountain range to mountain range. Lauren can barely drive on it, so she can't even imagine taking a pic-axe to the side of the steep mountain just to carve a road way too high above sea level. There was nothing wrong with the world when you only traveled by sea, because that meant you were always at sea level, and much closer to the ground. Fear of Heights (Lauren) and a total lack of fear (clint) is where we stood as we drove the parkway. We winded our way through Skyline drive, which is the first 100 miles, and connected to the Blue Ridge Parkway, stopping for pictures.
By now dusk was falling on us and we figured it was about time to stop for the night, so we pulled into the Peaks of Otter and began unloading the car. After all, we had to put up the midget tent, make dinner (which meant we needed wood) and had to get showers after we ate (which meant we stood naked in a bathroom with no lights and splashed cold water on ourselves from the sink with a soapy rag... oh yes no showers for the next 9 days..