Oh, Shenandoah.. Oh, Shenandoah

Hello,

It's Sunday, July 5th, and we are finishing up a relaxed Fourth of July weekend with our son Will, his wife Trish and their two cute pugs, Hercules and Annie (both rescued).. Soon we'll have to get packed for the last leg of our trip, and some of it might be in holiday traffic.. Argghh..

Last Thursday morning we started down our last 80 miles of the Blue Ridge Parkway .. The north 200 miles of parkway are in Virginia and the south 300 miles are in North Carolina. The Virginia landscape is different from North Carolina, less mountainous and more rolling and leisurely, with farm vistas interspersed with sections of shade and mountain laurel. This is relaxed riding at its finest.... except...

Jeannine was leading on this motorcycle reverie when a deer walked out onto the parkway.. Jeannine slowed down and the deer carefully looked both ways before crossing the road, just like mommy taught her.. Jeannine downshifted into first, and we cautiously started to pull away when BING, another deer jumped right out in front of us... Whew.. I guess we'll have to watch for deer... not the day to be speeding down the parkway!!

A little while later we saw a big turkey vulture off the road and all of a sudden it took flight, but just couldn't gain altitude and headed right for Jeannine, flapping wildly and intensely.. Jeannine really got on the binders that time and the vulture just missed her head. I thought it had hit her windshield... Both of Jeannine's feet went down, then back up as she nearly stopped and then motored on.. with a remark on the radio "That one was CLOSE".. It sure was..

We were soon at the north end of the Blue Ridge Parkway, having covered much more than the advertised 490 miles with our extra excursions. We rode into Waynesville, the nearest town, for a lunch break. We try to pick local places rather than chains or fast food for our meals... Most times we get a pleasant culinary surprise. Not this time.

We returned to the south entrance of Skyline Drive of Shenandoah National Park, right across the street from the north entrance of the Blue Ridge Parkway... Skyline Drive is a beautiful 105 mile ribbon of road going across the ridge of the Shenandoah mountains. It meanders in constant easy turns through forests and fields. Once again we rode through beautiful "tunnels" of mountain laurel in bloom and cool forests interspersed with farmland and vistas. We had ridden part of Skyline two years ago, but the southern part was closed for construction. Now we would do the whole trip in one afternoon.

Jeannine slowed WAY DOWN and pointed to her right... a bear cub on the side of the road, calmly sitting on his haunches and eating berries and watching us go by.. About a mile later I saw a mother and her cub in some rocks on the left side having their own snack of berries.. We saw more deer crossing the road, some hawks, and maybe even a falcon...It was a real wildlife treat. In short we saw 8 deer and three bear Thursday... We spent the night in Front Royal, Virginia and on Friday we headed for DC and Will's home..

Music??

Last night Will started laughing and said "You got to hear this, a violinist in the National Orchestra made a violin out of a baseball bat."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9LXHrzOVYA

Will's question "Can he hit a baseball with his violin too???"

So far we have ridden about 7400 miles. It will almost be time for a third oil change when we get home, and Jeannine will need a new rear tire....

We dodged the rain on the return trip. Our closest call came when we were sitting in a restaurant watching a cloudburst.

Missouri, Tennessee, North Carolina and Virginia sure are beautiful in June.... no question about that...

Vroom, vroom...

Harris and Jeannine