Lonesome Pines

Tuesday night we stayed at a small cabin at Orchard Gap overlooking the Parkway.  (On the way, we took a detour in Floyd, Virginia for lunch, stopped at Mabry Mill on the parkway, and toured the Chateau Morrisette Winery; dinner was at Primland Resort - too many photos of these places to place on a running blog!) 

The cabins were located at one of those places - an intersecting road, rolling hills, a once-thriving but now apparently abandoned gift shop of some kind - that depended for its very existence on the Parkway, and there were rental cabins dotting the hills across the way.  It was a quiet, almost a lonesome place (it was called "Lonesome Pines," although we never saw a pine), the adjoining cabins spaced far apart with cars parked at only two of them, holding unseen tenants, I suppose.

That night a rainbow arced across the sky and a glorious sunset lit up the huge grassy hill behind us.  What a glorious wide-open space this was!  It seemed like the grass, the rolling hills - time itself - rolled on forever.

In the morning I ran three miles along the Parkway - butterfly weed, morning glory, sourwood, and freshly-cut hay rolled into big wheels.  The perfumed air was almost intoxicating.