26th October 2010, 07:16
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| BHPian  | Blue Ridge Parkway - Fall 2010 (A photologue) Warning: I am no photographer and I use a 6 year old abused P&S camera, which I love but it is past its age!!! ------------------------------------ I have been waiting to go on a drive to enjoy fall colors since the trees shed their leaves last fall  .Well this was one trip where only planning I did was taking a lot of books from the library and sleep on them. What else can you do, if you borrow 6 books just 2 days before you start. But I would definitely recommend this book if you are not travelling in a hurry... Moon Handbooks: Blue Ridge & Smoky Mountains by Deborah Huso | Our State Magazine The book focuses only on the NC stretch (the parkway traverses thru Virginia and NC). You can download the Blue Ridge guide and an excellent map from the Blue Ridge website - Blue Ridge Parkway - Home There are enough information centers for you to pick one (if the information center has not ran out of them). Blue Ridge Parkway (America's own Nilgiri, but similarity ends there) is roughly 460 miles starting south of Shenandoah National Park up to Smoky Mountains. It is part of the larger Appalachian Range (something like Niligiri Hills are part of larger Western Ghats). On I-64 the exits are marked so it should be pretty easy to take the correct exit. As we were coming from Richmond, we took exit 99 (Waynesboro).  The weather gods were pretty much in our favor. The forecast was sunny and temperature in 50-60 range. A little chilly but the warmth of our excitment made it just right.  The road ahead is filled with colors, fun, etc...  To be continued... |
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26th October 2010, 07:41
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| BHPian Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: Atlanta, US
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26th October 2010, 07:59
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| BHPian | Quote:
More pics coming soon. | |
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26th October 2010, 08:03
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| Senior - BHPian  Join Date: Jan 2010 Location: TSTN
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26th October 2010, 09:11
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| BHPian Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: Pune
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26th October 2010, 09:58
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26th October 2010, 10:04
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| BHPian | Quote:
 ). To enjoy blue/purple at Blue Ridge one should go in early spring. I have heard and read that at that time the valley is lush with blue/purple rhododendrons. In falls I could only manage these wildflowers. Other pictures coming up soon. Quote:
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26th October 2010, 12:46
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| BHPian Join Date: Sep 2009 Location: Pune
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26th October 2010, 12:46
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| Senior - BHPian Join Date: Sep 2009 Location: Hyderabad
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26th October 2010, 17:36
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| BHPian | Quote:
________________ Let me take a step back (sorry)... The fall colors were around us even when we were leaving Cincinnati for Richmond (1st week of October)...  The drive between Charleston and Charlottesville (around 250 miles on I 64) is itself quite scenic as the Interstate cuts horizontally thru the Appalachian valley. At one of the rest areas...  And if you are travelling I77 or I64 in West Virginia, don't miss Tamarack.  More information can be found at their websiteTamarack - The Best of West Virginia     Although it is more like a shopping arena with a huge selection of hand made/natural (by people of West Virginia and has Appalachian) items, conference center, etc...  More information can be found on their website  Everything is expensive, this table was 16,000 USD   But naturally made honeys, jams and jellys were very tempting...  A few more...   But I don't want you folks to go there for just shopping. I have had the best set of grilled vegetables and meshed potatoes (with some trademark onion gravy) at the restaurant their. Don't miss it, the food is awesome.  P.S.: some pictures are taken by my wife with Canon Vixia HF S21 (camcorder). It is our recent purchase and this was the first outing for the toy. To be continued... Last edited by akbaree : 26th October 2010 at 17:44. | |
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27th October 2010, 16:49
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| BHPian | Fast forward to 10/16: We entered the Blue Ridge Parkway at the very beginning - 0th Milepost. And our aim was to drive thru the entire 460 mile stretch and reach Smoky's. Day 1 The goal was to cover around 280-300 miles on day 1 and retire for the day at Blowing Rock. Our first overlook...    Our second overlook...    Then the third...   If you are thinking why are we stopping at these overlooks, we too didn't had a clue. But this drive is for fun and we are doing it for the first time, we don't know if we should stop or pass the overlook. But soon we realized that we have covered only 5 miles in 1 hour and there are more overlooks than the mileposts .Our next stop was Sherando lake but only after taking couple of more stops for photo ops...   The Forest department charged us a 8 USD entry fee for driving upto Sherando lake. The lake is a few miles off the Parkway and falls under George Washington National Forest.    And with my son, that's my colleague - Giri, who generously gave in to my demands to join us on this drive.    To be continued... (we are somewhere near milepost 15...) Last edited by akbaree : 27th October 2010 at 16:55. |
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28th October 2010, 08:36
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| BHPian | Day 1 - Continued... Leaving Sherando lake behind, we were back on the Parkway and immersed ourselves in the beauty of Applachian - one overlook after another...    The colors were not as dashing as we expected them (so far) but for such occasional busts    At around 65th milepost we took another detour for visiting Natural Bridge.   @18 USD per head, the entry fees was pricy. And then a mile long trek brought us to this waterfall  To kill my frustration (time and money), only thing I could do, was to experiment with my camera - in ths case trying out the slow shutter speed technique for shooting waterfalls . It kinda worked.The detour however followed the banks of River James and was quite scenic. And so we decided - ofcourse - to have another photo op.  The downsizing surely takes away the minute details. There were 5 canoes in the picture above (at the edge of the river) that are not visible after downsizing. I had used them for showing size perspective.   Once back on the Parkway, the colors started improving    I realized only after I downloaded the pictures to my laptop, that I have taken a lot of pictures seeing up in the sky. So there are quite a few of this type to come. I really enjoyed the beatiful color and light the trees (with fall colors) created while looking up.   That's the sharp top mountain (at around 85th milepost, part of Peaks of Otter). There's a shuttle that takes you to the top (peak) of the mountain from where one can enjoy nice views of the valley.    To be continued... Last edited by akbaree : 28th October 2010 at 08:46. |
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28th October 2010, 09:09
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| BHPian | Day 1 - Continued... At around 5:00 PM we reached Roanoke mountain. There we decided to take a 4 mile one way loop drive to the top of the mountain - to enjoy views of Roanoke city. It may be interesting for the people of Roanoke to enjoy viewing their city from a mountain top. For us, it was just okay. We could have used that time elsewhere. However we had a larger problem at hand. We were at 120th milepost with just 30 minutes of sun left for the day. And we were miles away from our targeted destination - Blowing Rock. After some discussion we decided to ride till 9:00 PM. Ofcourse we coundn't resist a few more photo ops. The evening sun created some dramatic colors - check out this golden haze  The sun eventually went down but we were not complaining- we had a great day with lots of fun and colors.   If you are wondering why I haven't posted enough pictures of the beautiful valleys (from hundreds of overlook we stopped at) - my camera just couldn't capture the beauty. And I thought that Panorama is not my cup of tea - no tripod, in hurry to go to next outlook, and in 6 years, I never stitched one (although I have taken a few during my previous travels). This time too, I took only two Panoramas - just to experiment. And boy, it is such a breeze to stich them - I had installed the Nikon supplied software this time. So this is my first stitched Panorama (two pictures only) in 6 years of ownership of this camera...  After the sunset, the Parkway transformed into a ghost road. We had only a few cars coming across in a 100 mile drive. And thru that thick vegetation, it all looked Halloween'ish. I must add that every few miles we can see a huge of cluster of lights in the valley down indicating good population density. No wonder, 2/3 of the land around the parkway is privately owned and the region earns 1.4 billion US dollars just from tourism every year. We had our dinner at Fancy Gap (around 200th milepost). It was a nice family run restaurant. We got to see the average american and were served nice food. We retired for the day after driving an hour more (at 230th milepost) at a motel in Sparta county. Coming Up: Day 2 Last edited by akbaree : 28th October 2010 at 09:15. |
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28th October 2010, 09:19
| #14 |
| Senior - BHPian Join Date: Jan 2010 Location: TSTN
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| Awesome set of pics; loved the fall pics & I hope there're more to come Are there anymore pics taken in the evening? I love to see them.And good to see the rail tracks & I hope its being used too. Any idea if they're meant for goods or passengers? |
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28th October 2010, 12:07
| #15 |
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