the blue ridge

we spent a fine day saturday driving up the blue ridge parkway --- a section of it was closed above asheville and much of the route over the balsam mountains --- but we got on at spruce pine and drove 80 or 90 miles north and then back south until the road barricades --- 

hiked around linvale falls, which i had never seen before --- purty wonderful ---  one of your more interesting water falls, geologically speaking

grandfather mountain is now a biosphere reserve or something like that, which is part of why they built the linn cove viaduct (1987) around part of the mountain, and the last segment of the parkway to be completed, more than fifty years after construction began in 1935 --- seeing it was another first 

moses cone's flat top manor was all closed up, but it didn't matter --- the place is really spectacular

the parkway is one of our greatest treasures and even in the winter is really wonderful,with all the browns and grays of the deciduous trees and huge swaths of dark green of the rhododendron and an occasional splash of color from some lichen-covered stone or the galax --- and there weren't very many other people at all, which was luxurious