I Should Have Brought My Scuba Gear

This was our week to explore a wonderful part of the Southeast. Hubby and I planned a 10 day get-away, just the two of us. We hadn't done that this year yet as all of our time away has involved visiting family and business meetings. Vacation spent with family is a good thing, but so is time alone with my hubby, even after 31 years of marriage.

So what did we plan to do? We wanted to take a week and drive the 469 miles of the Blue Ridge Parkway. We wanted to see views like this:

Instead, this is what we saw for three days and 169 miles:

Fog. Lots of fog. Oh, and rain. Lots of rain.

Tuesday morning we woke up in Floyd, Virginia and saw the weather forecast for more rain, so we decided to abandon the vacation and come home. So, instead of a 10 day vacation, we had a 4 day weekend. Sigh.

Yesterday, I was really regretting the decision. Today after looking at the Blue Ridge Parkway page on the National Park Service website, I feel better. I read that there is an advisory for the whole Blue Ridge Parkway because of the possibility of falling rocks and trees (due to the massive amount of rain). I am choosing to believe that God sent us home to protect us danger.

We covered 169 miles on the Parkway, but didn't see anything but fog. We did do a few fun things, anyway.

Saturday we drove to Charlottesville, Virginia since it is near the beginning of the Parkway. When we got to town, we went to visit Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson. (Thanks, Joyce, for giving me a heads up about that!)

This place was built about 1772. (The many, many years of history out here in the east sometimes is hard to wrap my brain around). We went on a tour of the house and learned a lot and enjoyed it very much.

Sunday morning we stopped at an apple orchard, bought a few apples, some cider and a piece of apple pie to share at lunch time.

Then we headed to the Parkway in the rain and fog with hopes of the weather clearing up.

At mile marker 19 (the speed limit is 45mph on the Parkway), we stopped at an overlook, (with so much fog we couldn't see anything) chatted with another couple who were stopped there, then cracked open the cooler and fixed some sandwiches for our lunch.

After lunch, Hubby tried to start the car and there was NOTHING. Just a little wrrrrr sound. The battery was dead. We have never had any trouble with that car and we were stumped. We had no cell service and there were not many cars on the Parkway. We tried to text our kids to pray for us and to call someone to help us, but no texts would go through, We ended up sitting in the car with the hood up for an hour and a half before someone stopped to help us. I have never been more thankful for cigarette smoking, tattooed, pickup driving people with jumper cables!! (Our car was fine the rest of the trip...go figure.)

We spent Sunday night at a pretty cool hotel in Roanoke, Virginia. Monday morning we looked over a D-Day memorial. I am always sobered with the global impact of World War II. Before we left Roanoke, we browsed through an antique architecture hardware store and had lunch at an amazing french cafe.

Tuesday morning found us texting our kids that we were abandoning our vacation and driving four hours in the rain (of course) back home.

Hubby went back to work a couple of days this week. We now have a couple more vacation days to use in the remaining part of the year. Hopefully we can get in some three days weekends and see some more of this awesome part of the country.