Day 9

All (or rather y’all) aboard - today marked the start of the road trip proper: heading southwest without knowing where we were going to end up tonight! This turned out not to be such a great idea, more of which later. We were given the perfect start by Michael and Sage with a lovely present of a US road atlas (something we had planned to buy ourselves - we’re not that stupid!) This start got even better as we turned onto the Blue Ridge Parkway just as ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads’ came on the radio, and then better still when we rounded a corner to find two deer standing in the middle of the road! Too quick for our camera reflexes, but this was compensated by seeing another deer at a distance later on in the journey, which Lynne snapped as expertly as a little blonde David Bellamy.
Unfortunately things took a turn for the worse when we were hit by more storms. Trying to drive on a twisty mountain road when the rain is so hard you can’t see even with the wipers at full pelt, all the time dodging fallen branches, is not the best of fun! Luckily, there were plenty of scenic overlooks at which to pull over and ride out the rain, and in a way the weather provided for even more dramatic scenery, with steam rising from the mountains, in what was a beautiful drive.
Unluckily, however, the longer than expected drive on the parkway meant that we didn’t get as far as we’d hoped en route to Nashville, so it was at Roanoke that we decided to look for a place to rest for the night.
Now, before embarking on this trip we both said that part of the fun would be staying in dodgy motels somewhere in the middle of nowhere. You know - as in Psycho, No Country For Old Men, Monster and countless other great films featuring unhinged maniacs. We were wrong. It’s not fun at all. It’s just scary. What a contrast between the Days Inn in Roanoke and The Surrey in New York, which we left just four days ago. Oh how the mighty have fallen!