When you are going out of your mind because of a pandemic and you need to go back to nature for a little bit.
At the last minute I tried to arrange a tour of the bitten path in the blue ridge and I was lucky enough that Jay with WNC tour was available for a custom half day tour with photography lessons. https://www.wncphototours.com
The Blue Ridge Parkway is 469 miles or and goes across North Carolina and Virginia.
We started the tour around 4.30pm and drove for about 30 or 45 minutes. The drive is just gorgeous so even if you don't have time to stop, just take a nice long drive and enjoy the ride. We stopped a couple of times once on the Blue Ridge Parkway to take some shots and for Jay to teach me some new tricks with my camera.
The last stop took us to the top of one of the mountains to watch and take pictures of the beautiful sunset. And it did not disappoint. The spot was very busy with people taking engagement pictures, locals coming to enjoy the view and hikers. It turned out that another reason it was so busy is that starting that night and for the next couple of nights a comet was passing through and people were trying to spot it.
On the way back, we were lucky to have our phones with the flashlight on them because it was pitch dark going back down the mountain. It was strange because as much as I like cities, I found a new appreciation for nature during that trip. I guess I have never really spend time outside cities and nature scares me. It scares me because I don't know enough about how to spend time there, what to watch for, how to be prepare for it. But being up there on top of the mountain watching nature's most magnificent work was so peaceful. I am not saying that after this I want to go be dropped in the middle of nowhere and try to survive for weeks, but I would be a lot more open to hikes and camping with the proper guides at least at the beginning. I have been watching a lot of episodes of the show Alone as it is one of my boyfriend's favorite shows!
Asheville Botanical Gardens
On Sunday morning before my drive back to Raleigh I wanted to make one last stop at the botanical gardens to test out some of the tricks I had learned the day before with Jay.
A lot of the areas were closed due to Covid but the outside gardens were open and quite busy even at 9am on a Sunday. I took a lot of pictures using different settings and trying to make sure I remembered what Jay had showed me, which if you know me you know that I don't have great memory! The pictures below are the top ones from all the other ones I took as test.
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