Blue Ridge Road Trip

 10/8- Drove from Birmingham to Augusta to see the Pfinsy Nature Preserve.  It would have been nice at sunrise but it was too overcast.  Lake and swamp scenery with lots of Spanish moss.

From Augusta, I took Hwy 28 across the border to South Carolina and saw some nice palm trees.  I stopped at Clemson and snapped a couple pictures on campus.  Lunch was at one of my old stomping grounds called the Walhalla Steakhouse Cafeteria.  

I continued north on Hwy 28 through a corner of Georgia into Highlands, North Carolina.  It's a nice mountain town and at over 4,000 feet elevation, foliage was not quite at peak but I still saw some reds and yellows.  Next stop was the Great Smoky Mountain National Park and the highest point in Tennessee at Clingman's Dome, which I saw just at sunset.  It was colorful at the top of the mountain but the trees down below were mostly green with a few red spots here and there.  After a sit down dinner, I had a bit of an adventure finding a hotel.  I got one just south of Asheville only because of a cancellation.  In the end, it worked out fine as I actually go to see more of the Blue Ridge Parkway. 

 

The Blue Ridge Parkway was EPIC.  There was some patchy fog on the way up but that meant clouds below the mountains.  AWESOME!  No other words.

Last pic stolen from internet.  This is how it looks at peak foliage.

The next night, I was back in South Carolina but did see Whitewater Falls, Caesar's Head and Devil's Fork State Park.  I headed back to Alabama on Monday and stopped at Brasstown Bald (GA's highest mountain) and Martin Luther King NP, where a nice view of the Atlanta skyline was nearby.