Well, yes, I was in North Carolina for a long weekend and on Sunday I had to decide whether to head back to northeast Georgia or  drive the last few miles of the Blue Ridge Parkway and drop down to the entrance of The Great Smoky Mountains National Park (where the Elk roam) at Oconaluftee and the doorstep of Cherokee, North Carolina.

You know I decided to jump on the BRP and drove through Maggie Valley via Soco Road to the Blue Ridge Parkway. Once on the Parkway, the first overlook was Plott Balsams, and as we looked out, I noticed a tower with steps (above photo). Two other photographers were fixing their cameras on the same thing. do you see the tower?

We continued and as we drove we started to look for red in the middle of valleys of gold!

Fall along the Blue Ridge is really hard to describe. The lighting is always so special, especially the sunlight. It is because you are up so high! Drive on!!

The roadways wind along making the drive very peaceful. Enjoy it now because in a month or so the gates will be closed and snow will be on the ground!

This is the other thing that really captures the hearts of visitors—the Parkway’s rocky tunnels that are craved through the mountains. I remember driving through these when I was a kid with my Dad, and how he would blow our car’s horn all the way through them. Today, people still blow horns when going through these tunnels; and for the fun of it, I blew my car horn just once while going through this one.

So, it really was a wonderful afternoon . . . a yellow daze kind of day. Grateful as always.

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