sorry no pics; weak signal; keeps booting me out

Oct28; my L L Bean watch is still ticken and tearing pages off calendars

We drove the Blue Ridge Parkway today and I feel like a pretzel! We also drove through Great Smokey Mountain Park. That made me feel like a smoked pretzel. We climbed to 6 000 feet in the ol mh. Wonderful vistas as we climbed as there were lots of pullouts and one could stop anywhere along the way as long as one could get all tires off the road.. Now that we are away from the shore we are back to talking colours. Lots of orange and burnt orange. The east faces were considerably warmer than the west faces.

The were not many rigs on the road. I saw maybe 3 mh and there are no commercial vehicles allowed. I think that we will get the mh articulated for its next mountain adventure.

We saw a beautiful elk with a huge rack and his family. This was in a wide open field as we bottomed out and not at a high altitude amongst the trees. Sort of like, “Stan, go let the elk out for their 4:00 pm feeding in the tourist field.”

Poured 6 buckets worth last night and today was blue skies and sunshine into the Blue Ridge Mountains. We also have touched on thAppalachianan Range, too. The Great Smokey Mountains were smokey.

Before we entered our epic journey up the steep faces of the Blue Ridge Mountains, we stopped at an info place and I saw these neat banks made of oak and they had a glass front with different designs. The creator of these lived in Fletcher which just happened to be on our way to do the climb. Mr. Hubbert gave directions to his house and my excellent navigator got us their. This gentleman has been making these banks for 20 years. He uses old post box fronts that he buys from the US postal system. He has a stash, but there are no more. The carpentry is excellent and you pay according to the age of the front piece—mine is from 1902. I will take a picture and let you see it.

A young boy stepped from the car and said to the rest of his family, “That is bootiful.” He was talking about the view from the overlook.

This pretzel is going to try reconnect so I can blog this to you all.

Cheers