Last Leg: Appalachia

After our stint in Florida, it was time to head north and make our way back toward Philadelphia where our plane leaves on the 5th. We drove up the west coast of Florida and into Georgia. After a brief stop for peach cider, pecan rolls, and mayhaw jelly, we drove to northern Georgia and the southernmost Appalachians. We stayed the night in Gainesville (there's one in Georgia too apparently).

The next morning we got to the mountains. We stopped briefly at Tallulah Gorge to check out the (supposedly) deepest gorge east of the Mississippi at around 900 ft. You couldn't really see the falls from where we were, and frankly the gorge looked rather quaint.

We drove into North Carolina and got to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. After some looking around a bit, we settled on a campground in Cherokee territory. It was mostly deserted and our site was on the end of the row next to a creek. Nice!

We went for a walk on the NC side of the park. The leaves were starting to turn, but it wasn't full-blown fall just yet except for the chilly air. Still very pretty. The next day we drove across to the Tennessee side and hiked to Ramsey Cascades. We had to drive through Gatlinburg, which was a total crazy town of tourists. Yikes! The trail was very nice and the falls were wet.

We really liked the Smokys, especially the NC side which had much less traffic and fewer folks on the trails. Cherokee land was lovely. On our way out of the park, we took the back way from the camp to the Blue Ridge Parkway--up a dirt road with switchbacks occasionally passing some houses and farms owned by the tribe. Very nice. It kind of felt like a farewell to our trusty Subaru, since it can't come with us to South America. 

We took the parkway for 40 or 50 miles, then headed to Asheville. The city looked right up our alley, and we decided we should move there.

Just north of Asheville we dropped in to Fox Hill Meadery. Jason, the owner/meadmaker, met us at the door (the meadery is adjacent to their house) and opened several bottles for us. It was a great tasting and resulted in more than a few ideas for a future weekend meadery of our own. We came away with two bottles of spiced mead and a bottle each of berry, ginger/apricot, and reserve mead. Excellent stuff!

We drove north through the mountains and hit the I-81 corridor. We'd decided to just drive as far as we could and see where that got us. We wound up in Lexington, VA (there's apparently a Lexington in VA too). The next morning we took a short drive and detoured into Shenandoah National Park. We stopped at a lot of the overlooks and took a walk to a ruined mission. Good park, but we liked the Smokys better since the park encompassed more undeveloped areas.

After Shenandoah we got back to 81 and drove to PA, stopping in Lancaster again at Court & Elyse's. No more states to visit! Somehow we've reached the end of the road trip. We'll be in Havertown for a few days getting packed and prepping the car for our absence, and then we go to Quito. Wild.