Falling off the grid!

After leaving our “resort” campground, we figured the term resort was for the super bathrooms and washing machines plus that welcome free wifi! We started at the very spot they broke ground to start the parkway, amazed that we’d come over 200 miles and were quickly bearing down on the last leg of our trip. Once we left North Carolina and moved into Virginia, it seemed that we moved into civilization but left behind all the trappings of civilization – all cell phone reception died!

I was excited to stop at the Blue Ridge Music Museum because I love bluegrass and applachian music, I figured this would be a great place to teach my children a little about the heritage sitting only an hour away from home. Unfortunately the museum was still in building stage and there wasn’t anything there, just a harp with instructions on how to play Mary Had A Little Lamb and a gift shop. (Joy as they started on me about buying them this and that, we settled on a Blue Ridge Parkway guitar pick for Daddy.) The good part was that I was a little stressed about getting down the road and with nothing to see it made hitting the road a little earlier than usual a good idea.

Our next stop is one of my favorite parts of the parkway. We stopped at an overlook, read a sign that said easy 20 minute hike so went off into the woods. The hike looped by a cool stream and both boys started begging to cool off. I made sure neither side ended in a 40 foot waterfall and let them have at it. I love watching kids play in a stream, they looked for crayfish, salamanders, then practiced putting their faces in the ice cold water. I stuck my feet in and on the sultry day had to admit it sure did feel good! The parkway is full of these little treasures, places you can leave the world and let kids be kids and do the things you enjoyed doing as a child.

We passed Mrs. Puckett’s cabin along the parkway and this is where I am amazed that Virginia side of the parkway feels like family connected. The Southern Part was rugged, remote, not many roads off the Parkway where Virginia was full of roadside grocery stores, farms and family. As we walked up to the cabin and started reading about Mrs. Puckett, two men got out of a pickup truck and walked around the cabin too. They came up to the sign and said, “Mrs. Puckett delivered our mother, my brother and I are just fooling around today.”
Mrs. Puckett lived for 102 years in this tiny cabin, bearing 24 (yes, john and Kate plus 8) 24 children none of which lived pass infancy. I couldn’t imagine bearing 24 children, then I couldn’t imaging losing that many! So Mrs. Puckett did what she did best, she delivered 1000 babies as a midwife, the last baby delivered the year she died. What a testament to being a woman, being strong, and being alive! Then that sense of family, that everyone is connected here as the two men walked around the cabin talking to each other.

That same sense of family at Mabry Mills, a grist/saw mill. The park rangers told of the family and as they talked about Mr. Mabry they called him Uncle Ed, like he was their uncle. The families here lived in hard times but it didn’t stop their sense of kinship, that everyone was connected whether it’s Mrs. Puckett delivering babies in payment for food which she shared with others to Mrs. Mabry running his saw mill once a year to cut lumber for himself and his neighbors!

The highlight of the boys day was all the animals we saved! Max found two caterpillars, one on the inside roof of the RV! We lost that one two days ago and I guess in its desperate attempt to escape it became visible on the roof, boy he laughed about that one for a while. Then we stopped and saved a turtle from the middle of the road, finishing up our day with wild turkey sightings and deer sightings! Nature Boy as we call him, loved that day.
Wolf on the other hand loved the seafood buffett at the Peaks Of Otter Lodge! We all got a whole lobster with crab legs then all kinds of seafood-two trips to the seafood buffett then three trips to the dessert bar, I knew I’d made my money! Amazing that you could get that type of food right off the parkway!

Finally we really fell off the grid. We tried to find a campground off the parkway and ended up on a gravel road to nowhere. Both boys kept telling me that they knew it would be nice until we stopped at the Triple Oak Lodge and found a mobile home with a toilet sitting outside the front door. Back to the Parkway and here I sit back at the Peaks of Otter Campground, generator running because it’s SO HOT out there and not a since bar on the phone or computer. Still typing on the computer but disconnected from the world.

I think my “hairbrained” idea was a good one when I heard the boys sitting in the background plotting their next RV trip with the “Big Momma” and Mommy at the wheel. They both came and asked if we could drive Skyline Drive because they didn’t want the RV trip to end, chalk another one up to Mommy coming up with a great idea, now if I could just keep the refrigerator from exploding whenever someone opens it! Any other roadtrips we can put on our list of maybes?