Day22/23 07/08Mar25 - HH to NC

Friday we did our morning walk on the beach with Bob, Maribeth, Gigi and Theo before breakfast. 

It was chilly, in the low 40s, but there was little wind so it did not feel nearly as brisk as yesterday. The sunrise reflecting off of the bottom of the clouds gave us a beautiful orange ceiling. 

There were a few people on the beach, mostly dog walkers. At HH you can let your dog run, this makes it a great beach to walk a dog.  Gigi and Theo love it.

The tide was out, unfortunately, this guy did not make it back out with the tide. 

Our walk was about 2 miles (I did not start the tracker until we reached the beach). 

It is a great way to start the day. 

After our walk, Maribeth cooked us a nice breakfast, June did most of the packing and I worked on my confuser catching the blog up from the previous two days. 

We were loaded up and left around 11:00, it was 62F and warming. Unfortunately, we were headed north where the temps will continue to decline. 

It was an easy 350 mile drive from HH to June's nephew's place in North Carolina. We arrived around 18:00, it was 53F but sunny.  It quickly became apparent that it was time to transition out of shorts. 

We spent some time catching up with Eric and Myra over dinner. Eric and Myra have been doing some significant upgrades to their home, a new standing seam roof and they made their entire second floor into a hobby/craft space. It is very nice. 

Saturday Eric and Myra made us a nice breakfast. 

After breakfast I flew the drone so Eric would have some pictures of his new roof. It's a lot of roof!

I also spent some time trying to convince Eric to start a new hobby, home automation.  I don't think I was successful. I know if I could get him hooked he is the kind of person that would go way beyond where I am with Home Assistant. If anyone else wants to try free home automation software, here is a link that will get you started.  Home Assistant

I look every day at what is going on at home, I have noticed that the last few days, the wind has been pretty intense.  My home weather station has recorded winds well over 50mph for two days.  I expect to find a yard full of tree limbs when we get home.

We eventually left Myra and Eric around 10:15, it was 65F and sunny.  

We set out to intercept the Blue Ridge Parkway just across the Virginia border. From previous trips we were aware parts of it may be seasonally closed this time of year, but we did not expect most of it to be closed. We set our GPS for the Blue Ridge Music Center visitor center since it is close to the VA border. 

This is what we found. BlueRidgePway Video

This is what we found at the visitor center entrance. It was not surprising.

It was getting late so we picked a Harvest Host brewery in Wytheville, VA and made our way to Seven Sisters Brewery for the night. We were only about 30 mins away and they had not yet replied to my request for a stay when we arrived. They were friendly and immediately accepted our request. They did warn us that there was going to be a Drag Show at 7:30 PM.  

We sampled their brews and I kicked June's butt at Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots. She has that look because she can't figure out how I just "knocked her block off". I had these when I was a kid...don't even try me!

We retired to the Serenity Falcon before the show started. 

Despite the show, it was a rather quiet evening, we watched another episode of the Diplomat and started the Martha Stewart movie, but I couldn't stay awake....it was that good. 

Sunday we plan to skip up to Skyline drive in the Shenandoah NP since that appears to be open.