Upon the Blue Ridge Mountains...

Two twenty-three year old girls pulled out onto the Capital Beltway from Bethesda, Maryland on July 1st, 2007.  For this first road trip which set the precedent for all that were to come, we had a goal in mind.  In this case, our goal was a small town in Northwestern Kansas called Norton.  As juniors at Dartmouth College, the two of us had somehow heard about a place called the "They Also Ran Gallery" and, given our interest in obscure presidential history, it seemed like a prime candidate for a (semi) cross-country road trip.  First stop on the trip was a ride down Skyline Drive.

Skyline Drive, for those who don't know, is a 105 mile road through the Shenandoah National Park, which is located in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia.  We paid the toll at the Front Royal entrance and proceeded to drive along the winding ridges of the mountains.  I had seen mountains before, obviously, and they always held a sort of mystique for me, but these were something special.  We passed majestic trees, scenic overlooks, and clear, nearly cloudless blue skies that seemed to go on forever. 

Pictured above is the scene from an overlook.  I'm not sure what town that is.  Below is a scene that shows how the Blue Ridge Mountains got their name:

The reflections and shadows give the mountains in the distance a bluish-green tinge that makes them unlike any mountains I've seen.

Occasional mile markers or informational signs dotted our way:

A song my Dad used to sing came into my head as we meandered along the scenic byway.  I murmured the lyrics under my breath.  "Upon the Blue Ridge Mountains... There I'll take my stand..."  As I hummed, I became aware of the car coming to an abrupt stop.  "What the hell?" Kacie and I murmured almost simultaneously.  Several cars were crawling along ahead of us, and as we rounded one of the sharp curves of the parkway, we saw why.  An enormous camper was plugging along at approximately five miles per hour.  It was hard to complain too much, as the roads were steep and sharp with little visibility, but it was hard to remain patient at such speed.  A few cars pulled up behind us, and we formed an odd little caravan on a stretch of road that had probably never seen a traffic jam before  To our relief, we soon saw an exit for the interstate and that concluded our sojourn on the Blue Ridge Parkway.  I-81 it was.

I-81 in Virginia looks pretty much like any interstate you can picture, complete with the huge billboards advertising Cracker Barrel and other such tempting road food.  Due to the camper delay, time was suddenly of the essence, as we really wanted to cross the Tennessee state line that night.  But the Cracker Barrel billboards finally broke us, and we pulled off the road in Christiansburg, Virginia to order heaping plates of fried chicken and mac and cheese.  It was exactly the jolt we needed to get us to the state line just after sunset.

After pulling into a rest area just across the state line and taking stock of where exactly we were, we decided to retire for the night at a Super 8 motel in a town called Kingston, Tennessee.  We did not choose Kingston arbitrarily; one of our goals for the trip was to stop in a town called Bluff City, Tennessee which I had learned through genealogical research was the home of some of my paternal ancestors.

As we checked into the Super 8 we started chatting with the young man behind the desk.  He asked why we were in town and we told him about my ancestry.  It turned out his last name was the same as that of the ancestors I had researched.  To this day I wonder if he could be a distant relative, and my exploration of the area convinced me this was a distinct possibility.  But it had been a long and tiresome day, and by that point all either of us wanted to was climb into bed and sleep off that dizzying drive through the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains.