652 - Blue Ridge Parkway
Today we drove the infamous Blue Ridge Parkway- one of the longest linear drives in the US.
But we only did an hour of it.
We’d just left Marby Mill, and it’d already started pouring again. We were moving like surgeons. Hit a spot for couple seconds in between rain storms, film some content, then get the fuck out. Rinse and repeat.
And honestly by this point, I was kind of done for the day. We’d already done Stiles Falls this morning, and Dragon’s Tooth the night before. Over 24 hours of photography and my creative fumes were burning on empty.
But we were on our way back to Roanoke, the drive was scenic, and the sunset was actively happening. Who was I to deny myself the honor?
I sighed and swerved over to an overlook. For this adventure, the name of the game was low-hanging clouds. As we cruised along the colossal ridgelines of the Blue Ridge Highway, they zoomed in and out at frightening speeds. But the only thing that mattered was if we could catch them before they were gone.
I managed to snag this shot right out of the gate, which tickled my fancy because of how the clouds seems to halo around the hill:
And then, right before we zipped back on the highway to hit another overlook, I got this shot of the road:
It really did look like that. Mist spraying the landscape like some sort of giant was watering us from above.
We kept driving, and tried a couple more overlooks with less luck. It was truly hit or miss based on how the sky was feeling. But eventually, we landed on an overlook off-loading fog like a haunted house.
But it was time to change it up.
We decided to bust out this sexy-ass Alara had hiding in the back. And using her newly acquired climbing skills, she scaled a tree with it on absolutely no problem and we managed to capture this beauty:
What a shot. That wind hit so perfectly it felt like it was meant to be.
A sign, at last, that I was officially done for the day.
But then we drove by a Christmas tree farm shrouded in mist, and I simply couldn’t resist one last ounce of that sweet photography dopamine:
FYI, that’s where your trees are being grown. In the deep backwoods of Virginia. But honestly, I’d expect nothing less.
Ok. Bye for real now.
