Lunch in the Clouds

Yesterday, on a beautiful, clear, sunny summer day, we decided to travel a short distance on the Blue Ridge Parkway to enjoy lunch at the Pisgah Inn.  The Pisgah Inn consists of a modest cluster of buildings, including a convenience store, a motel, and a restaurant with two full glass walls overlooking some magnificent views of the Blue Ridge Mountains.  For a "tourist trap," we always have felt that the food is quite good and reasonably priced and the atmosphere is spectacular.  We generally try to find our way to this treasure a couple times each spring to fall season.

In spite of the title of this post, I am not going to bore you with photos of what we ate for lunch... there are much more interesting things to show you!

Driving up, through the tunnels and past the observation points, I anticipated the berries on the Mountain Ash trees.

I was not disappointed!  The Mountain Ash has always held a special memory for me.  They grew well in the region of Minnesota where my dad grew up and I recall his bringing a sapling home to Buffalo in a coffee can on one of our yearly car trips to see the Minnesota grandparents.  That tree grew to maturity with me in the yard of the house that I considered "home" during my teens and early twenties.  The colorful berries were always a gentle reminder that fall was on it's way.

Russ insisted on taking my picture in front of a Mountain Ash.

Just to keep things even, here's a picture of Russ with the mountains to his back.

It seems no matter how clear it is at our elevation at home, there are clouds this high up... where did that dark cloud at the top of the photo come from?  (I remember one of our last visits where the dining room was enveloped in a cloud and it was only as we were finishing our meal that we could start to see a slight clearing.)

It occurred to me that as many times as we have been here, I never took a picture of the summit of Mt. Pisgah.  The transmission tower at its peak is visible from many spots around Asheville.

Usually we are drawn to the panoramic views of the layered mountains in the other direction.  Even with that dark cloud, it is impressive, and the sun streaming through the clouds creates some islands of brighter color on the canopy of trees below.

I enjoyed seeing some of the summer wildflowers and so I will share some pictures of those with you.

 We made a note to identify this pretty fuchsia bell shaped flower... haven't done that yet.  Perhaps you know it's name?

 And all along the parkway were clusters of what looked like brown-eyed susans.  I'm not sure if this is the exact flower, but you will notice that there are bees in the center of two of these blooms.

 These berries were a distance away and a little difficult to capture.

One more view before we leave.

A bit hazy, but I never tire of seeing those layers of mountains reaching toward the horizon.

We only made one stop at an observation point on our way back down the parkway.  But I was happy to capture the Joe Pye weed in the foreground.

As I paused for my photos, I did my best to capture this butterfly alighting on a flower.  I was a distance away and only had my trusty iPhone, but I think you can see that flash of yellow and black.

While at the Inn we struck up a conversation with a couple who were there for a two night stay.  They were a bit older than us and surprisingly lived in South Asheville also.  It had been their custom to spend a couple days each summer at the Inn to enjoy the solitude, the scenery, and each other.  The gentleman, who was in his 80's said that he traveled all over the United States and the world with his job and when it came time to retire, he chose this area... said he never found anyplace better. 

I'd have to agree!