Blue Ridge Parkway

An attempt to pay for our trip

Tuesday, June 19th 2001

Panning for precious gems  In an attempt to pay for our trip, we panned for gold today. We drove north on the Blue Ridge Parkway and stopped in Little Switzerland, North Carolina. We went to the Emerald Mine to pan for precious gems. We got some great looking rocks (and some that they told us were of some value) and had a lot of fun. The guy who went through our "gems" with us was rather hard on Bill. He kept telling the kids not to let Dad tell them which ones were worth keeping. Getting advise from the expert
We drove further on the parkway passing a few stops that we would have liked to see, but didn't realize that until we were past them. And it's not easy to turn this house-on-wheels around on the parkway! So we missed a least one waterfall that we wanted to see. But we again saw some beautiful sights.

We decided to give Gerry & Rosie a taste of the "other" side of camping (well, as much as we could with this big "tent"). The previous night had been full-hookups at a KOA with a pool and laundry and right off the highway. We spent this night at the Julian Price National Park Campground which is right off the Parkway. It has no hookups and no pool. But it has a beautiful lake and the night was very quiet. Luckily it was cool enough so we didn't need the air. We sat around playing UNO and Phase 10 into the night. Bill and Joe went fishing - they sat and listened to bullfrogs and watched the beavers swim until it got just too darn dark to see their bobbers.

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