Part Two - Is this it? Are we really there?

Little Switzerland part two It wasn’t a town we expected but it sure did make a mark on food and hospitality!

We left Little Switzerland and continued down the parkway, looking for a great place to hike. On a whim we stopped at milepost 320.8 for a short hike called Chestoa View. What an amazing place! Wolf and Max caught a butterfly (I think it was on its last legs) on the way and put that with Little Junie in the bug house. We walked a short way to a stone ledge that sat on the valley that went on forever! You could see Table Rock to the right and out across the valley, the cloud made shadows on the mountains with trees that stretched forever! I was commenting on the view when I looked down below where I was standing there were two rattlesnakes! I think they were more excited about the butterfly and rattlesnakes than anything else on the trip.
We spent the next 45 minutes discussing where to let Buttie the Butterfly go along the drive then decided on a nice patch of flowers next to the Moses Cone Manor House. What amazed me about Moses Cone is that A) someone lived there and B) that they gave it to the Parkway. I pictured a leisurely stroll through the craft museum but as both boys whined about wanting something, it was a quick in and out with empty hands all around.

The next great hike was The Cascades, a short 30 minute down to a waterfall. This is the best part of the Parkway. You pull off, get out of your car, then 10 minutes later only hear the sounds of nature, or in my case the sounds of nature and your children arguing as you walk down to a water fall. This place was beautiful, log bridges over streams, stone steps, the a wonderful water fall to boot. On the way back, Wolf holds up a plant and says, “Is this poison ivy?” I look at it and answer, “No, that’s poison sumac.” Luckily Pam Melang gave me the idea to always be prepared and there’s calamine lotion in the bags.

We leave the rugged wilderness of the Southern part of the Parkway and the Northern part is a totally different animal. Rather than traveling cliffs and the sides of mountains, we move into rural farmland with communities and farms butting right up to the parkway. There’s still the views that last forever and the last one before we stop for the night makes me feel at home. I’m looking out over the mountains and there’s Winston Salem, so close! I say, “Do you want to spend the night at home?” “NO!!” They exclaim, “and not stay on the campground?” Here we sit 45 minutes from home on the North Carolina/Virginia State line!

So last good story of the day, we make reservations at a campground and as the GPS takes us over there we pull into this BEAUTIFUL resort, wooden buildings next to each RV, tennis courts, putt putt, waterfountains, they boys get excited until….
“Lady, you’re at the one down the road, just go a little further and you’ll find it.”
Ours looks like tornado alley, flat land without a single tree and only RV’s. We pull in and park and say a prayer that storms stay away at least for the night because this place would draw them like a magnet! Or if my husband was here, I’d be pregnant by morning – yeah, bad joke.

Have any favorite spots on the parkway?