Riding the Blue Ridge Parkway
This trip, April 8 - April 16, 2006, was really a two-part vacation. On the 8th, I rode my motorcycle along with the family - in the mini van - to Orlando, Florida to spend some time at Walt Disney World. The plan was to drive down Saturday and Sunday, arriving early in the day on Sunday and enjoy some time having a nice dinner and possibly going to one of the parks for a few hours.
As it turns out, that was not how it went down. It started off badly when we got out of the house a little over 4 hours later than desired. What can I say... I have in-laws and most of them are female. The weather was raining and dreary. All day. Then, only 300 miles from home, we ran into the worst traffic jam I think I've ever personally witnessed. According to my GPS, I averaged 7 MPH for about 2 1/2 hours.
At around dinner time we decided to grab a hotel room, bag the driving, unwind from the harrowing day in the car and get an early, fresh start and finish the trip on Sunday.
Sunday was clear and sunny, albeit a little chilly and the driving was much better. We pulled in to Disney's Pop Century Resort at about 8:30pm, or so. Perhaps later. It's all rather blurry at this point. A long, long day. I immediately fell in to bed after parking the cars and the bike and grabbing a quick bite to eat.
Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday we visited several of the parks including Magic Kingdom, Epcot and MGM studios. I had only a few personal goals... ride Test Track, visit Morocco in Epcot and get some lamb, and see/do several things in MGM. Mission accomplished.
Thursday AM I was getting on the road to start the 2nd half of my vacation. I can only take so much Disney, ya know?
Sorry, no pictures from Disney.
Now for the rest...
Blue Ridge Parkway Trip - Thursday
Blue Ridge Parkway Trip - Friday on the Parkway (early)
Blue Ridge Parkway Trip - Friday at Deal's Gap (Tail of the Dragon
Blue Ridge Parkway Trip - Friday on the Parkway (PM)
Blue Ridge Parkway Trip - Saturday on the Parkway
Blue Ridge Parkway Trip - Saturday - a little bit of history
The rest of the trip home was uneventful and I didn't really take any pictures from the Parkway on the Virginia side. Two reasons, first, I found the Virginia end of the Parkway to be something of a disappointment compared to the North Carolina end. Beautiful, to be sure, but much less mountainy and parts of it were downright residential. Second, I only had a 256meg memory card in my camera and it was more or less full by this point.
I arrived home Saturday night at about 10:40pm. It's just scary and amazing how accurate the GPS is with its time estimates. If you're looking for a great GPS, I highly recommend the Garmin Quest/2. It's got a battery life that gives you all day functionality, internal maps and POIs to cover most needs ( the Auto Fuel POIs saved my butt more than once on this trip ) and the auto-route-recalculation is pretty cool. Check it out.
Some teaser pics...
IMG_2335.JPG
IMG_2347.JPG
IMG_2364.JPG
