The Fall Foliage along the Blue Ridge Mountains
When we closed our summer home on the east end of Long Island for the trip south to Ft. Lauderdale, the fall foliage was at a peak in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. We drove the famed Skyline drive and hiked parts of the Appalachian trail where it intersects or parallels the Blue Ridge Parkway.
The colors were, indeed, spectacular and the deer fed alongside the road with little evident fear of the visitors.
A must stop was the caverns at Luray, a short distance off the Skyline Drive. The photo illustrates some "sheet"stalagmites found some 200 feet underground.
We stopped again at Natural Bridge, Virginia, a natural stone formation that was eroded by a stream and where the Lee highway (Route 11) passes above. In the early morning, the stone bridge was partly in the shadows. George Washington left some graffiti (his initials) carved in the rock.
The stream begins a mile up from the Natural Bridge as a waterfall. There is a lovely hike along the river to reach and view the falls. We could see trout in the pool below the falls.
To climb once again back up to the Blue Ridge Parkway, we drove Route 11 right over the Natural Bridge.
At Harrogate Tennessee, near Cumberland Gap, where Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee meet, there is a university dedicated to Abraham Lincoln, the Lincoln Memorial University. We stopped there because, in 1952, our Aunt Hattie C. Birman donated her husband's (Paul's Uncle Phil's) collection of Lincoln memorabilia.
Some of the items are on display in the museum and some is in their archives. We'd written and asked to see the Collection. Steve Wilson, the curator and Leanne Garland, the archivist, were on hand to give us a guided tour. To see some of the items click on Philip E. Birman Collection.
RGB VERLAG