Day One: Blue Ridge Parkway & Kingston Tennessee

A 3:00 am Text From Joe reads, "See you in 30". I didn't read the text until I woke up to his 3:40 phone call informing me he was waiting outside. No time for showering, no time for eating, we vowed to depart at 4:00am and indeed we did (4:09am to be exact) I must say that leaving my house this morning was difficult for some reason. There was something in the back of my head questioning the feasibility of sleeping in a tent for a month in the middle of the wilderness (wilderness = KOA certified campground...many of which have swimming pools). That's 90% true. Although we will spend the majority of our nights in certified/protected campgrounds we will do some backcountry / bear country camping where there is no messing around. For example: Can't leave open bag of cheesy puffs in your tent or anywhere for that matter.

So today Joe and I drove around 11.5 hours from NJ to Kingston Tennessee. For the majority of the day it was sunny, clear skies, and 85 degrees. We decided not to go straight to the Great Smokey Mountains so that we could spend more time on the awesome Blue Ridge Parkway. We plan to get a good night sleep tonight so we could be at Cades Cove in GSM by early AM...but let us get back to the Blue Ridge Parkway. The Parkway started being built in 1935 during Roosevelt's administration and links two parks, Shenandoah and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Today we drove through the Shenandoah part of the parkway and we actually got lost trying to get back to the main highway (Navigation system was telling us to make a right turn off a cliff...) Here are some picutures from the highway.

The above was one of the straighter paths along the way. The road is very windy without many guard rails to keep you from nose diving a solid thousand feet through bolders and trees.

One of the scenic views. We were about 3200 feet above sea level.

The couple ahead of us on the motorcycle forced us to drive at a good pace to check out the views

So day one is in the books as Joe and I try to get some sleep. Every sound we hear we assume it's a Black Bear hungry after months of deep hibernation. So far the most dangerous animal we have seen was a stray cat, an unattended pitbull, and a pack of humans. Tomorrow will be a short 2 hour ride to Cades Cove where we plan to drive an eleven mile loop (where most of the wildlife can be found in the park) and then go for a 3-4 hour hike with road flares and bear mace packed and ready. We are anticipating some good pictures tomorrow, weather permitting. Day 1. We are alive. 21 more to go.

Vin and Joe.

Shout out to Jen for informing me to seal the seams of my tent. It poured for 30 minutes after we assembled. No leaks...