First post!

Hi from the road! You may or may not be aware that Jim and I left our sailboat, Neverland, on the hard in Florida for the summer. Being boat-less for a few months, we decided to take a road trip to the Grand Canyon and back. We will be mostly tent camping in national and state parks along the way. 

Just a couple of days before we were supposed to leave, we discovered that we had a serious problem with the transmission in the car we needed for the trip (a Subaru Outback which has already had the transmission replaced and "repaired" a few times...).  So we traded it in for a brand new 2015 Outback, loaded it up with lots of gear and got on our way only 1 day late.  It seems we always have a bit of a rough start with these adventures, but so far they've always gotten MUCH better as we go along...

We are already in Nashville, Tennessee, so I'm a bit behind on this blog. We've been mostly camping in the mountains in places with no wifi. As background information, this 2-month trip has so far taken us down the Skyline Drive in the Shenandoah Mountains and along the Blue Ridge Parkway to Asheville, North Carolina. From there we traveled west through the Great Smokies, camping near Elkmont, TN. Today we began crossing Tennessee. In addition to Nashville, we'll be stopping in another music mecca - Memphis, TN. Then we'll travel straight west through Arkansas, Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle. We'll spend some time with good friends near Telluride in CO, then travel south to Taos and Santa Fe in NM, then head west through AZ to visit Sedona, Flagstaff and the Canyon de Chelly before reaching our final westbound destination - the south rim of the Grand Canyon. Jim has been to many of these places before but I've never been to ANY of them, so this trip is amazing for me. If you have special recommendations for us along the way, please let us know. We'd love to hear from you!

Our first day on the road (July 7th) was a little rainy and to make up for lost time, we drove only the first 100 miles of the Skyline Drive, which is lovely but has a 35 mph speed limit, so we continued south on faster roads.  

The second day we did the same, reconnecting with the Blue Ridge Parkway near Boone, NC, about 100 miles north of Asheville. Boone is a pretty town which reminded me a lot of Huntsville, Ontario where my sister and family live. We had breakfast there at little outdoor café with a wonderful flower garden, These are Gooseneck Loosestrife, I believe. Well-named.

We had a dramatic drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway with storm clouds, though not much rain. Just outside Asheville we camped at Lake Powhatan for 3 nights. Well-tended campsites, hot showers, no bears, no bugs – awesome. It’s soooooo quiet in the woods, and I love the fragrance of woodsmoke and pine needles.

Asheville is a really interesting town with lots of history, beautiful and varied architecture, lots of art museums and studios, little shops, unique locally run restaurants and cool places to hang out. Lots of people were spontaneously helpful and friendly, quick to offer suggestions and directions. I have photos of Asheville to share with you, but I'm having trouble figuring out how to make my photos in IPhoto smaller so that I can insert them more easily as images in this blog. I'm going to end this first post here and send more news soon.