The nations first scenic parkway, in which building began on September 11, 1935, offers a variety of scenes. Much of it looks very similar to that of Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park. Windy roads, which never straighten out for more than a quarter mile, vast views from numerous overlooks, short stone walls lining sections of road and sides of dense forest. The Blue Ridge Parkway has numerous, more specific, traits though. Absolutely no shoulder on the road, vast lengths of cut grass spanning 20 feet from the road, rhododendron line the roads while putting off their strange odor, high mountain fog and massive walls of rock with holes of dark unknown. The roads are well built and maintained. Outside of the Park Service, nobody is allowed to build within a certain distance from the parkway. Various people gave me various numbers for distances so I wont try to report any. Regardless, due to the distance between it and buildings, the parkway allows us to feel immersed in the woods, on a private expressway of fall colors.
It's not a national park itself, but it's been the most visited unit of the National Park System every year, since 1946. It's very busy with motorists, but it's for a good reason. For some reason, I keep relating it back to Machu Picchu, simply in the feeling of disliking the congestion, while simultaneously recognizing it's because I'm in one of the most beautiful places in the world. It makes everything better for a bit and I smile at each person who is over-saturating the park, just as I am. It's often easy for individuals to be grudging or upset at the presence of other people, even though they're also contributing to that same feeling for others. It's a contradictory feeling, which I try to avoid. They swerve around us as we stop to admire a large praying mantis posing in the middle of a lane.
Considerable lunches of barbecue have made it easy to cut our first day on the parkway a little short. All the beauty and splendor of a place mean little when fighting a battle with the weight of my stomach. Bathing hasn't made a presence in our lives since Dirk's house last week and therefore a water source becomes the most desirable facet for a camp spot. Crossing a bridge, we spot Big Bend Creek, fifty feet below us. Clear stream with a bottom of large rocks, scattered beds of sand, ferns lining its sides, moss growing on various deciduous trees and scattered pine trees with characteristic acidic rings at their base where other life fights to grow.
Ghost riding (not really) our bikes down a loose, crumbly and steep path along the guard rail of the bridge, we find ourselves at a campsite which suits all our needs. Weather Bug, an iPhone app which often tells us "0% chance precipitation" while the heavens are pouring down upon us, informs us there will be rain starting in the late night and throughout the next day. Being as we've found ourselves under a bridge, we look forward to the rain for the first time on our trip. We hang our hammocks while playing Under the Bridge from the boombox. His bridge holds much deeper meaning, but ours will keep us dry. We agree we've taken the final step, by becoming bums, under a bridge, down by the river.
I have a checklist of ways in which I wish to hang my hammock. They range from hanging my hammock from within the branches of a single tree, between two rocks, off a train car, under a bridge, on a beach, utilizing my bicycle, on a boat, a considerable height above the ground, above or below another hammock and lastly...with Troy Walker holding up one end of it for an entire night, or eternity...whichever comes last. The list used to be longer, but many have been checked off. These include over water, off my truck, in the snow, above the upper tree line, in my driveway, and many other ridiculous but not specific ways. This bridge enables me to check off two more. My hammock, El Diablo (named so because I find security in something that nothing wants to mess with), is currently hung underneath a bridge and a considerable height off the ground. Technically, it's only a few feet above a concrete base, but the narrow base is about six feet tall. The hammock itself is strung ten feet above a stream, as a beautiful sight to wake up to. Unfortunately it has all come at a cost. I've gone through yet another iPhone screen. It was in my pocket while mounting the concrete base and have now found it to be shattered as I've arrived in my hammock. This case may be "Lifeproof", but it certainly isn't Considerably Careless Claytonproof. It's not as bad of a shatter this time around and therefore I probably won't have it replaced. Writing on my phone a considerable amount, we'll see how frustrated I get now that my keypad punches the space bar when I hit N.
Bathing upstream from Hueso, he washes once to clean himself and again to wash my cleansed dirt off. Realistically not being a factor, it creates good conversation. We bid each other early goodnights, but end up continually yelling back and forth the distance between our hammocks. The acoustics of the bridge enable him to hear me perfectly, while the stream next to me seems to drown his exact pitch.
Waking up to densely wooded views, I look down the ten feet to a stream below me. I chuckle at how awesome my life is, realize how privileged I am and listen as rain drops begin to fall. Anywhere else, this would be the morning scurry I've spoken of. Here, all I do is lay back and watch the waves of rain drops pick up and die down. Protected in our concrete and steel fortress, surrounded by a dense wooded setting, it was the first time I had ever been able to witness the rain from my hammock without the use of a rainfly. The drops fall within feet of my hammock, allowing for a beautiful view, yet I stay dry. It's already later than we planned to leave, I'm hungry and have to pee, but I'll lay here and enjoy this for a bit longer.
We become stir-crazy. Hueso handles it much better than I do. "Radar says we have more rain this evening and through the night. Would you rather be out there or under here when it does?" he asks in a way that desires for me to really think it through. Personally, I'll be anywhere, in any condition, if it means getting some miles behind me and some different scenery from my hammock. The rain stops, we see a predicted four hour break from the rain, and we pack up. Getting up to the road, the rain picks up as soon as we cross the bridge. Shoes find shelter in my panniers, Chacos slip on, rain shells zip up and amphibious mode engages. We pedal through the rain, cautiously on the downhills and soggy on the uphills. Little, bright orange geckos line the edges of the pavement, soaking up the moisture on the asphalt, which would be torridly hot any other day. Hueso's bamboo fenders are his pride and joy, but they offer very little in ways of practical water routing. The rear fender doesn't come down far enough and his tire shoots a stream of water up to six feet tall during fast descents. I try to either be in front of, or 50 feet behind, him. He calls his bike the Bamboozler, for it bamboozles everything in its path and wake. I'm all game until it bamboozles me. Im really starting to hate bamboo. By the end of this trip, I will certainly hate bamboo.
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