Movie Muse - Erin Expounds: North Carolina Mountains: Day 4

I knew before we left on this trip that my father *really* wanted to drive part of the Blue Ridge Parkway while we were this close to it. In fact, an entrance to the parkway was literally just a few miles up the road from the cabin. Given my previous experience, I will admit to not being very excited by the thought, but again, I love my family, I knew everyone would enjoy it (except possibly me), and I had drugs.

I also knew that my parents had driven this section of the parkway back in the early spring and had said it was actually quite smooth. Okay, let's give it a shot. We got on at this very pretty bridge:

And headed south. Not too far up the mountain, we found this beautiful overlook, where I insisted we get a photo so I could prove I had *actually* done it! LOL

And my parents were indeed correct. The parkway itself is not very twisty and (for the most part) not all that steep. Apparently, my previous attempt was actually thwarted by the approach to the parkway, which was full of switchbacks wherever it was we were at the time. As I mentioned, they drove some of it back in the spring, and they said that getting on or off the parkway near Boone likely would have killed me. But this section where we were was actually very nice and didn't bother me with the medication working. We went about 15 miles up to a small picnic area, where we knew Luke could get out and run around. The view wasn't what we hoped, but Luke still had a blast.

He chased butterflies:

And picked flowers:

And I tried to get a little artistic:

He tried to reach the leaves:

And he raced Daddy to the sidewalk and back:

By now it was past our usual lunch time, so we headed back down. We took photos of North Carolina's Stone Mountain (which we did not actually visit; not much to do like at our Georgia Stone Mountain):