I was a little rattled yesterday after dropping the bike, and spent the first 18 miles today riding on fresh chip seal gravel. It was so nice to get past the gravel and back to relaxed pavement riding. We pulled off into an overlook ~20 miles into the day, to the sight of a downed Harley. Knowing exactly how this guy felt, it didn't take me long to get stopped and over to the bike to help him get the bike back up. He was also rattled a little, but thankfully both he and the bike were ok.
A large part of today's riding was through mostly pastoral landscapes, though at the end of the day we got back into more of the same high mountain views. The mountain views is why I really wanted to come here, and if I'm not mistaken, the views tomorrow are supposed to be the best on the BRP.
We spent about an hour at Mabry Mill, which is a charming property from the early 1900's. There was a National Park Service volunteer that was working in the blacksmith building, and we watched him make a coat hook out of a steel rod. He was a friendly man, who talked the whole time as he worked. It would have been cool to hang out with him for a day, learning some of his craft.
Clouds rolled in a lot more throughout the afternoon though we never got rained on. There was quite a stretch that had gotten rain, supposedly it had come down pretty hard for an hour, but we missed all of it. The temperature dropped a little but it was so humid that it didn't feel much cooler off the bike.
Blowing Rock, NC is the town we are staying in tonight, a nice little tourist town right off of the Blue Ridge Parkway. We are not totally sure yet where we will be staying the next few nights, somewhere close to the Great Smokey Mountain National Park. There's a bunch of bucket list roads to ride there. Even the last three days, there just aren't many straight stretches of road, probably haven't had 5 stretches of more than 1km of straight road.
Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there, especially our two favourite dads!
Mabry Mill, right beside the Blue Ridge Parkway
Preserved cabin off of the BRP
Made friends with a couple from North Carolina earlier in the day. We met them here again, and they offered to take our picture. "Go on and kiss her now" he said, just before snapping this picture
Artsy shot that I couldn't resist taking
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