WHEN we awake this morning and open the curtains, there is the view. Even though it is still somewhat cloudy, we have blue sky and we can look out over the whole Shenandoah Valley below us. Our building is right at the edge of the mountain, and the scene is completely unobstructed. We are very impressed. The good weather doesn't last long, however, and by the time we get underway (when the photo above was taken), it is cloudy and drizzly again. It is also cold. Linda uses the birthday money she got from my mother to buy a sweatshirt (an item we had never anticipated bringing).
We don't stop at all the turnouts today, since it rains all morning. We do stop at some, to take photos of flowers and of some more deer who are munching leaves at Big Meadows Lodge.

Before long, we reach the end of Skyline Drive and continue down the Blue Ridge Parkway. Immediately, we notice that the Parkway is much more spectacular than the Drive, with higher peaks and vistas on both sides of the road. In some places we could see out over the valleys on both sides of the road at the same time... At least, we would be able to see the valleys, if we could see any distance at all. Mostly all we see are the insides of clouds.

STOPPING AT THE National Park Service's Whetstone Ridge rest area, we have a light lunch of homemade vegetable soup. The restaurant is cheery and from our table we can see a huge, lovely bush with brilliant orange flowers. I asked our waitress what it is called and she told us its's a "Flah-eem Ohr-zale-yer".

After leaving the restaurant, we find we need to exit the Parkway to get gasoline, and this brings us to the tiny village of Montebello, where we refuel at a combination gas station/general store (with wooden floors)/post office/cabin rental office. There is a fishing lake here, like those at Linda's parents', and a log cabin that looks just like the "authentically restored" one at the tourist information center on the Parkway, except this cabin has people living in it. It was not too far from here that Linda saw the bear. Well, she thought it was a bear. It might have been a bear, you never know. Upon closer examination, the bear turned out to be of a particularly bovine variety.

Without taking much time out for sightseeing, we reach Peaks of Otter Lodge and campground by mid-afternoon. It is still cold and raining (can this ever end?) and we continue on, having already decided against our original plan of camping here tonight. As we near Roanoke, the mountain country turns to farmland, with picturesque hilly farms made even more so by the mist and rain. Linda especially likes this pretty area and takes lots of pictures.

THE ECONOLODGE also offers a free continental breakfast (cold donuts, hot coffee, powdered cream-like substance), after which we check out and drive to Whittaker to begin a search for the R. J. Reynolds plant. Actually, finding the plant is easy. It occupies just about every other building we see. It takes awhile, however to find the Visitor Center. The tour through the cigarette factory is interesting, made more so by the fact that we are assigned our own personal guide who walks with us through the plant. I especially enjoy the tour, since I smoke Camel Light cigarettes. Later, we find out that Philip Morris in Richmond, Virginia (where Linda's Marlboros are made) offers a similar, though less personal, tour of virtually the same equipment and procedures.

It is a long drive from Winston-Salem to the coast of North Carolina, though most of it is on high-speed freeways. We are held up for over 45 minutes in a traffic jam outside of Raleigh, caused by a bad accident. While waiting, we listen to the radio playing an old radio comedy show starring Don Ameche. Not long after we get moving again, we stop for lunch at a local fast-food called Kountry Kitchen for our first taste of real southern barbecue, with grits, greens, rice & beans, and red-eye gravy.

Driving toward the shore, the highway reminds us of the Black Horse Pike, with pine forests and sand. We arrive at the Sea Level Inn in Sea Level around 7:30 this evening. The coastal area is not like anything either of us has ever seen, looking like a mixture of both the forests of the Poconos and the New Jersey shore, with tiny villages containing mountain cabin-looking houses surrounded by pine trees and docks on canals leading into vast areas of salt marsh.

Dinner tonight is in the small restaurant at the motel, which also happens to be the only restaurant in the area. We order seafood, of course, and this is where I discover the wonders of soft-shell crabs. I've never seen one before, and I have to ask our waitress how to eat it. Linda falls totally in love with hush-puppies, a southern specialty bread. She needs no instructions on how to eat them.

The victim in Linda's Sidney Sheldon novel has managed to survive the caverns intact, and now her husband intends to murder her at the shore...