Love, Lydia - Notes from a geeky, plus sized artist.: National Park Adventures Part 2

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

National Park Adventures Part 2

Hey everyone,

So as a bit of introduction I thought I'd share a bit about why I'm writing about National Parks.  I've always loved National Parks and Historic Sites; as a kid my mom dragged my brother and I out to all the ones she could since we were homeschooled.  And I'm pretty sure I loved every minute of it then as much as I would now.  I'm going to be creating a page on here with a list of all the ones I've been to because I have a goal to visit them all one day.  This is more ambitious a goal than some of you may realize because there are over 300 of these treasures in the US and its territories.  So I think I'd settle for all in the states if I had to, though I'd love to get to the more exotic parks as well.  I'm even geeky enough to have a National Parks Passport to record it all since they have rubber stamps to ad cancellations at each park, sometimes more than one stamp for larger parks!



Anyway, Bryan and I took a trip up into North Carolina's mountains back in September for a family weekend.  On the way there we took the Blue Ridge Parkway from about milepost 277 at Deep Gap to 316 at Linville Falls, and on the way back from our weekend we went from around milepost 332 at the Museum of NC Minerals down to 383 and the Blue Ridge Parkways Headquarters in Asheville.  The two stretches were very different thanks to the weather.  Here are some of the highlights.


On Friday's leg of the trip we were able to see Moses H. Cone Memorial Park.  It's a mansion that used to be owned by Mr. Cone, which was willed to the park service with the condition that the land be preserved and open to the public.  Housed inside the building is the Blue Ridge Parkway's craft center.  Bryan and I bought a lovely pair of prints by artist Debbie Littledeer and really enjoyed all the work from the members of the Southern Highland Craft Guild. When we'd left Raleigh it was bright and sunny, but as you can see in the pictures above the weather was changing as we traveled.  In fact I don't even have pictures from our second stop at Linn Cove Viaduct.  The mountaintops were covered in clouds and visibility was low.  We sadly missed out on the iconic view of the engineering marvel that is the Viaduct area.  Here's what it looks like in good weather:

Image from DigitalHeritage.org blog

I'm originally from Roanoke, Virginia, so I grew up with the parkway being a fixture in our Sunday drives and family picnics.  However, what struck me most on this weekend trip was how different the North Carolina sections of the parkway are from the portions I'm familiar with.  For starters all of the 16 tunnels on the parkway are in the NC section.  Additionally the NC section is much higher in elevation overall.  Here's a chart that compares using the height of the viaduct as the example -

Image from BlueRidgeParkwayDaily.com

Over the weekend we spent time with family celebrating birthdays and anniversaries at the Nu Wray Inn in Burnsville.  It's a fantastic little town that's close to Mt Mitchell, the highest point in the US east of the Mississippi River.  We walked the downtown area shopping, visited the Saturday morning farmer's market, and enjoyed to garden and front porch at the inn.  The weather was just starting to feel like fall, which made it lovely for hiking and being outdoors.  Some of us decided to go the underground route however, and visited Linville Caverns as well.


On the trip Monday we started with the Museum of NC Minerals and went south from there.  However, this entry is getting a bit long, so I'll write more about the second part of the trip very soon!  Take care and I'll be back soon with a post about various ways to make crafts and DIY projects with yarn that don't involve any knitting or crochet!

Love,
Lydia

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