On the second day of traveling on or near the Blue Ridge Parkway, we got up early and drove back from I-81 to the historic Parkway. We would along the hazy road for the morning hours. Often the slopes dropped away on both sides of the road, only a few feet from each road shoulder. We were driving through the clouds and Ashleigh, who was driving, commented that it felt like driving through the sky. She was right: it reminded me of driving on the Pacific Coast Highway, where the road following along the seaside cliffs often has a blanket of clouds below the road, above the ocean, like a fluffy white sea. We had a nice drive and stopped once for a cloudy but still pretty vista on a hilltop.
By early afternoon we arrived at the north end of the Parkway, where it continues on in the Shanandoa National Park. We had driven the beginning and end of the Parkway, but skipped the middle. I wanted to continue north through the park, but I also wanted to detour into Charlottesville for lunch with my friend Joe Scott, his wife Emily, and their children Owen and Miriam. We decided on the lunch, which meant we would skip the rest of the scenic drive. We had a nice lunch at a nice pizza restaurant which served specialty pies. Joe and his son liked the trailer; Joe complimented the customized licence plate frame which reads "Twangs Shaggin Wagon".
From there we took the fast roads north to our waiting appointment just outside of Washington, DC. On the phone, my local friend in DC, Vijay, informed me that he was moving from DC to NYC at that exact moment, and we decided he would wait until the next morning and we would take him with us. That would turn out to be a fateful decision, but we wouldn't realize it until late the next day. For the time being, we were on our way to a comfortable home in a nice neighborhood with showers and dinner and a proper bed.
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