eWe celebrated Betsy’s birthday this year by going to Maggie Valley, North Carolina. We traveled part of the way along the Blue Ridge Parkway, also a favorite drive for us. I got this picture of My Beautiful Bride at the Raven Fork Overlook. August 5, 2025..
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Looking Glass Rock is a prominent landmark in the Pisgah Forest of North Carolina. The rock — really a mountain — rises to an elevation of nearly 4,000 feet above the valley. The granite surfaces of the mountain reflect the sunlight, which gave the mountain its name.
I got this picture of Looking Glass Rock from an overlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway.
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For the past several years Betsy and I have been celebrating our wedding anniversary at the Pisgah Inn on the Blue Ridge Parkway near Asheville, North Carolina. The inn has a wonderful restaurant, and the views from the rooms are absolutely beautiful. And it helps that we’re high enough in the mountains that air conditioning is not needed. I imagine we’ll keep going back for more years to come.
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Betsy and I have been celebrating our anniversary at Pisgah Inn on the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina. We keep going back because of the views of the mountains are amazing. We very much enjoy sitting on the balcony of our room and taking in the view.
We usually hope for clear, sunny days when we’re visiting the inn, but a cloudy, overcast day has a beauty of its own, as the picture above shows. In the early morning light we were able to look down on some of the clouds covering the valley and some of the mountain peaks.
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I imagine that most ‘normal’ people use a vacation as an opportunity to sleep in and take things easy. Fortunately (or unfortunately) My Beautiful Bride and I are not ‘normal’. We often get up earlier than we normally would just to enjoy the sunrise.
That was certainly the case when we visited the Pisgah Inn on the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina in August. We couldn’t see the sun from the balcony of our room, but the sky was still beautiful at sunrise. The picture above was taken the first morning we were there.
The fog in the valleys looked like a blanket spread around the mountains below us.
Looking to the west also gave us a peaceful, serene view of the world from the mountains.
The sunrise on our last morning at Pisgah Inn gave us a lot of incentive to come back.
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Betsy and I traveled to the Pisgah Inn on the Blue Ridge Parkway of North Carolina in October to enjoy the autumn colors. We found colorful trees, although there was not as much as we had hoped there would be. Mother Nature, however, more than made up for any lack of color on the trees by providing gorgeous color in the morning skies.
We got up at dawn each day to enjoy the show. The morning started with a single star shining down as the horizon turned a brilliant orange and red.
As the light increased we could see fog in the valleys below and mountain tops in the distance peeking through the fog.
The eastern sky slowly filled with yellow, orange, and gold colors, silhouetting some trees along the ridge line.
Yes, we definitely found some gorgeous colors in the mountains of North Carolina!
In November, 2012, Betsy and I spent a couple of days in the mountains of eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina. One of the places we visited was Grandfather Mountain, not too far from Blowing Rock, North Carolina.
The day we visited Grandfather Mountain was beautiful, but cold. The cold didn’t bother us too much as we started up the mountain, stopping at the Sphinx, Split Rock and the Wildlife Habitat on the way. But by the time we reached the Mile High Swinging Bridge at the top, the wind was really blowing and it was cold, COLD, COLD! The weather had been mlld previously, so we weren’t prepared for the cold.
We made it across the bridge nevertheless, although for some reason there weren’t a lot of people around. After thawing out in the Visitor Center at the top, we headed back down the mountain for some warmer temperatures.
This slide show contains images taken that day during our visit to Grandfather Mountain. We’ve been back since, but the weather was milder at that time.
If you would like to see these and other images taken during our visit to Grandfather Mountain, along with a caption for each image, click HERE.
Betsy at Tanbark Ridge Overlook, Blue Ridge Parkway, North Carolina. June 26, 2013.
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This is my post for the Our World meme. This meme is a second generation of My World Tuesday created by Klaus Peter and is hosted by five wonderful ladies. To learn more about our world or to join and share your part of the world, click HERE.
In late June Betsy and I traveled to North Carolina to meet my son Robert and his family. We took advantage of the opportunity to drive along one of our favorite roads, the Blue Ridge Parkway.
We picked up the Parkway in Asheville, North Carolina, and headed north. We stopped at the Tanbark Ridge Overlook to enjoy the view.
The mountains and the sky were both beautiful, and I tried to capture that beauty as best as I could in this panoramic shot.
The view from Tanbark Ridge Overlook, Blue Ridge Parkway, North Carolina. June 26, 2013.
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This is my post for Skywatch Friday, a meme for sharing views of the sky from all over the world. To see more, or to join and share your own photos of the sky, click HERE.
Betsy and I met up with my son and his family in North Carolina late last month, and we used that as an excuse to drive along the Blue Ridge Parkway. The Blue Ridge Parkway is sometimes called America’s most beautiful roadway, and I’m not about to argue with that.
The photo above was taken at the Tanbark Ridge Overlook north of Asheville. The hole in the clouds was what first attracted my attention, but the photo also shows why the mountains are called the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Waterrock Knob, Blue Ridge Parkway, North Carolina.
August 4, 2011.
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This is my post for Skywatch Friday, a meme for sharing views of the sky from all over the world. To see more, or to join and share your own photos of the sky, click HERE.
The view from Waterrock Knob. August 4, 2011.
The Blue Ridge Parkway is beautiful in any season and in any weather. Cloudy weather may mean you can’t see as far into the distance as on a sunny day, but on a cloudy day it sometimes seems you can reach up and touch the clouds.
Mountains and clouds at Waterrock Knob, Blue Ridge Parkway, North Carolina. August 4, 2011.
These pictures, from my archives, were taken on a cloudy August day at Waterrock Knob on the Blue Ridge Parkway. These photos were taken while hiking from the parking area to an overlook higher on the knob.
Senior Moments 