![]() I thought how lucky it was she was not following us up on the Parkway half an hour earlier when I really wanted to go to the loo and Carolyn “put her foot down” to find some elusive facilities. I had to chuckle to myself because the good officer told Carolyn she came over the bridge ‘a bit hot’. Wot? We actually engaged her in a nice conversation before going slowly on our way. The sergeant looked at the licence, turned it this way and that, said she assumed it was legal but didn’t intend to bother with all the paperwork it would take to book us, so on this occasion she would let us go, reminding us to take care and hoping we would have a nice day. I kid you not, it was just like the movies. #On the trail of the lonesome pine registration“Did you notice the speed limit on the bridge, Ma’am, and again at the town limit? May I see your driver’s licence and car registration documents”. “Was I doing something wrong?”, asked Carolyn. A diminutive lady officer of the Sheriff’s Office appeared at the car window. At this point the air went blue – no bad language, just the lights on top of the County Sheriff’s car lighting up the street. Carolyn slowed from our fast road to take the bridge (limit 35 mph), slowed again because the town (the same 2 houses and a gas station) wanted us to do 25 mph and she then slowly pulled over and came to a halt. ![]() A town called Glasgow appeared on the sat nav but reality revealed a bridge with a couple of houses and a gas station. We decided to drop down to the interstate and make up a few fast miles and find a cup of coffee at the same time. ![]() It took a while, but we were once again high up on the ridgeway and becoming slightly concerned that we still had over 150 miles to go to reach our hotel with no opportunity to go much faster than 45 miles per hour. Her description of the water we found was “a lacklustre lake”! Carolyn, who was driving, normally has an infallible sense of direction but on this occasion……we were slightly off course. Foolishly, I thought the sign indicated an opportunity to look out over a lake but after winding downwards for about 6 miles we came to a rather unprepossessing pond posing as a lake and surrounded by camp sites. There are “pull offs” or “view overs”, as they are known here, which provide opportunities to see across valleys and mountains, but you do need to be careful when something like a lake is signposted. It links the Shenandoah Valley to the Smoky Mountains and nowhere were we going to find a lonesome pine here – there are hundreds of thousands of trees, whose branches meet and cover the road for mile after mile. This wonderful road is over 400 miles long and in places climbs to 6,000 feet. I'd recommend it to anyone.The morning definitely had an autumnal feel to it and as we climbed up the Blue Ridge Parkway and emerged above the tree line, the sight of the morning mist still clinging to the distinctly blue coloured mountains was one to behold. Can still see Claudette Colbert sitting at the base of the pine, talking to God!!!What a wonderful, emotion stirring, memory making book. I bet I've read it 1000 times or more over the years, and it is on my nightstand today! They had the recording also, but it is gone now. One thing I truly loved was my gramma's favorite book, the Trail of the lonesome pine. ![]() Not many luxuries, but what they had was loved and cared for.(I have much of it today). We were from Seattle, and that city was SO much different! My grandparents lived off the farm, doing trading and working for necessary things. Helping gramma with cleaning, cooking, canning, tending the gardens (flower and vegie) and just feeling loved. Lazy, sunny days, doing chores, helping grampa with haying, wood cutting and stacking, milking,currying the horse,(Teddy,) picking fresh vegies from the garden, etc. When I was a youngster (1940's), my favorite memories are the summers my sisters and I got to spend on my grandparents farm at Dewey, (Anacortes) WA. ![]()
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