Gazing in Disbelief

Thursday morning I ran 3 miles from Little Switzerland, partly on the Blue Ridge Parkway but partly on some quiet residential gravel roads I discovered nearby.

But Little Switzerland was not the only place from which we gazed with disbelief today.  After breakfast, we drove to Crabtree Falls and hiked down to one of the most gorgeous waterfalls in the area:

After lunch back at the Inn, we drove up to Mount Mitchell, the highest peak in the Eastern United States at 6684 feet.  (Remarkably, the Altimeter app on my phone was accurate to within 10 feet of this elevation).

The climb to the observation tower is short but steep.  It had turned cloudy and rainy, and we got caught in a shower on the way down from the summit.  But what a surprise!  The restaurant near the top (at 6578 feet) was open and thriving on this rainy day, so it was time for a mid-afternoon piece of blueberry pie and a cup of coffee, made even more memorable by the swirling clouds and the shower that kept coming and going.

A brief stop at Craggy Gardens (we passed up the hike to the top because of the threat of rain) and we finally arrived at Pisgah Inn, surely our most special place along the Parkway and, in some ways, the final destination on this trip.  It is where we celebrated our wedding 35 years ago, at this very table as far as we could remember:

I had a great deal more hair then, but Martha's hair is long and lovely, and she looks as beautiful today as she did that day.