Imagine Our RV Dreams: Blue Ridge Parkway, Virginia and Eastern Tennessee

We left Gettysburg, Pennsylvania and drove south to McGaheysville, Virginia and spent the night at a Boondocker's Welcome site. Our hosts live next to a church which made it easy to get parked since we could use their parking lot to get turned around. We got parked in their yard and relaxed. We were only staying one night so we did not disconnect the truck.

The next morning it was raining so we got moving pretty early (for us) so we didn't have to worry about getting stuck in the grass and we got out with no problems. We continued south to get on the Blue Ridge Parkway near Afton, Virginia.

We drove the Blue Ridge Parkway from mile marker 1 to 100.

We stopped at various view spots and visitor's centers along the way. It wasn't the best weather but still pretty.

It was still a pretty drive in spite of the rain, clouds, and fog.

We rode the Blue Ridge Parkway all the way down to Roanoke, Virginia. In Roanoke we spent two nights at the Elks Lodge. This lodge has a huge swimming pool but it was too cold to swim and the pool was closed for the season.

We talked with nice people at the lodge and watched the Atlanta Braves beat the Houston Astros to finish the world series. On our full day in the Roanoke area we ran errands.

We left Roanoke and drove south west to Elizabethton, Tennessee.

We just happen to pass by the Bristol Motor Speedway, formerly known as Bristol International Raceway and Bristol Raceway, is a NASCAR short track venue located in Bristol, Tennessee. Constructed in 1960, it held its first NASCAR race on July 30, 1961.

We spent two nights at the Elks Lodge in Elizabethton, Virginia where we were parked along side the 78.5 mile long Watauga River. This lodge had a nice sized property with a lot of room for RV's to park on the grass. It was $25/night for electric & water hookups.

A couple of fly fishermen trying their skills.

Across the river was an RV park.

Diesel was $3.05/gallon on Nov 5, 2021 at a Sam's Club in eastern Tennessee.
We thought that was expensive at the time! Little did we know what was to come!

On our free day we went to do a moonshine tasting at Tennessee Mellomoon distillery. We had some home made moonshine in the past which we really liked so we thought we would give it a try.

We each had had 4 flavors to sample and then we tried each others so we really each sampled 8 flavors.

Unfortunately we really didn't like any of them but bought a bottle of strawberry for $15 thinking we could mix it with something to make a tasty drink somewhere down the road. After we walked out of the shop we asked each other if we liked it thinking the other maybe liked it. We kind of felt awkward not to buy something for the tasting. (We ended up donating the bottle to a camp crawl at a rally in Arizona which I'll get to in another entry.)

We continued east in Tennessee to Spring City where we stayed on another Boondocker's Welcome property. The directions said to look for a giant Pegasus horse to find the property.

Well, I don't know much about horses so had no idea what a Pegasus horse was. Now I know!

Pegasus is a mythical winged divine horse, and one of the most recognized creatures in Greek mythology. Usually he is depicted as pure white.

As we pulled in the driveway we came to this gate. It was a little creepy so I texted my friend and told her where we were if we were never heard from again!

We were met at the gate by the owner who drove down to open the gate and then had us follow her to her house and barn area of the property.

We got backed in next to the barn where we had access to her electricity.

Our host was an interesting woman who had recently lost her husband on a cruise in Greenland. She thinks he was one of the first Covid cases before the pandemic was public. She now runs her husband's welding business.

The property was huge with some horses and a grass landing strip for planes.