A Sunday Drive

Colleen and I decided to go for a drive on Sunday and headed west to the mountains. The Skyline Drive runs 105 miles along the Smoky Mountains, in Virginia and occasionally (like at Mary's Rock) through them

We stopped at the Dickey Ridge Visitor Center

where we bought postcards and watched Experience, a 10 minute film, introducing us to the park. [I think the same guy narrated the intro film the Matt and I saw at Manassass Battlefield a few months ago - I wonder if he has a contract with the Nation Park Service]

We were expecting it to be cooler in the mountains, but it was still muggy and overcast. The higher we went, the more obvious it became that a storm was coming. At about mile marker 25 the sky opened up and down came the HAIL. I tried to catch some to photograph it - why am i such an idiot? - to no avail. The storm cells were tiny, but violent. In between them, we would drive further, stopping every so often (if you've never driven Skyline Drive, there are overlooks, pull-off and parking lots for trails every 1-2 miles) to take in the views. At one point the sky and mountains were actually purple (the picture doesn't even begin to do it justice; i gotta figure out how to change the photo size/quality)

Eventually, the storms cleared, the temperature dropped and the only word to describe the rest of the Drive would be GREEN

Of course there were no rooms available at the lodges (being Memorial Day) so eventually Leenie and i started back towards to Arlington, stopping at Brookside Restaurant and Cabins in Luray for dinner. This place was cute, cute, cute.

{just realized you can seriously see my sunburn - nice}

They had a very Southern dinner buffet (fried chicken, catfish fingers, shrimp and sweet ham) which was delicious. Colleen, however, seemed a bit daunted or outright alarmed by the vast quantity of yumminess (photo taken after she had already been eating for 20 minutes - wow)