Bolting Along the Blue Ridge Parkway

The Blue Ridge Parkway runs for 755 kilometers through North Carolina and Virginia, between Great Smoky Mountains National Park to the south and Shenandoah National Park to the north. It's supposed to be slow, scenic driving, winding atop the mountains. Instead, we drove the whole thing in less than two and a half days.

The views are undeniably gorgeous, but they're homogenous, and after a couple of days we actually started to get a little bored. The view from the top of Mount Mitchell, the highest peak east of the Mississippi River, is particularly outstanding. Or so we've been told.

Despite being engulfed in clouds and caressed by freezing winds, we walked up to the viewpoint, deserted but for a couple conversing in a strangely familiar accent. I asked where they were from. "Australia", they replied in unison, their hands in their pockets and their shoulders hunched against the cold. "Well yeah, which part?" At this point they realised and laughed, before saying "you first". I ventured "Perth" and they countered with "formerly Perth, now Australind". Turns out they lived in Wembley Downs. You can't make this up.

An hour or so of our final afternoon on the Parkway was whiled away at an overlook, our legs dangling off the edge of the wall and the sun warming our backs. A series of strong thermals were dancing up out of the valley, and we were treated to a paraglider and a hanglider setting up their gear before soaring off in quick succession.