Last night we decided our one last hurrah in the mountains would be to drive to Mt Mitchell (the tallest mountain east of the Rockies) and then off to Charlotte. This morning we were greeted with low overcast skies (again) and decided to head to the mountain on the hope it was below the clouds. So off we went through Spruce Pine to the Blue Ridge Parkway (again). The many bicyclists out for a ride on the parkway only added to the fun of a twisty mountain road with occasional rain and fog. When we got close we could see that Mt Mitchell was enveloped in cloud, so after a quick consult with our paper trip planning and map app we decided to drive past the turn off to the mountain from the Blue Ridge Parkway and head to the pinnacle crag trail.
Sometimes you have to formulate and take plan C on the fly, like when they close the road you are on at the turn off you no longer want to take. I suppose we could have returned to plan A, crawled along the road to the peak in dense fog and hope eventually the cloud went away, but we decided instead to head back the way we came and take a road to the south and lunch. So back we went, back thru the bicyclists (I only had to come to a stop once for a car passing a couple of bikers), past the overlooks that only gave a view of clouds, until we reached a ridiculously steep and winding road (NC 80) that took us south to Marion, around the flatbed tow truck crawling down the mountainside, to flat straight roads and lunch.
After a stop at Lake James it was off to Charlotte to deliver the three heavy tubs of memories to Erin. Everything else on this trip was secondary to that goal. After the three tubs were safely ensconced in her living room it was hugs all around and the fun of visiting began.
