Tuesday, November 6, 2007

The Trip South









In contrast to our earlier travels, where we went on the by-ways to see the local attractions, we now began to simply cover some miles. So our first jaunt from Galion to Marietta, Ohio was a matter of Interstate Highways. Nonetheless, Fred Garmin, our resident GPS guru, managed to make lunch interesting by misplacing our destination by a full city block, telling us we had arrived at the LaFayette Hotel when in fact we were just next to The Old Levee House. [A short footnote: Fred went totally bonkers as we approached my cousin's home last Saturday, because the main highway leading there was only two years old and not in his memory bank – he just sat there spinning round and round and "Re-calculating . . . "]

This first picture shows the Levee House – lunch was, in fact, quite good, and the view of the Ohio River out the front window was spectacular.

We wound up that first night at a rather disheveled campground which was, nonetheless, brightened considerably by this flag . . .

Then it was on to the Blue Ridge Parkway where the typical windshield view looked exactly like this one. The total 450 miles or so of Blue Ridge Pkwy is something to behold, although we only covered about 100 miles of it. It's a real pleasure to meander along through fantastic scenery.

Our campground that night had a spectacular setting, but was largely populated by empty trailers waiting for next summer and the return of their owners. Down the road from there we ran across a commemoration of (what we thought was "Tom Dooley") one Tom Dula, while in the opposite direction from that very site was perhaps the best color we've seen in our whole trip.

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