A Slice of North American Beauty...

To Celebrate the 4th!
Top: The view off of tempestuous
Mount Mitchell; the "Big Boy" of the Appalachian Mountains at 6684 feet! The state park at the top of this mountain is the at the highest point east of the Mississippi. I would say that as we were driving, 'perilous' was a good word to describe the mood of it. One gets the feeling that Mount Mitchell is to be taken quite seriously. I imagined the first people coming up to it's summit. The top was like a strange, new land with oddly altered vegetation everywhere that would require some study (actually.) There were many stark, white and dead trees interspersed throughout the other trees also. Looking down was a totally new affair. I liked the view down but could only see down partially~ we were just too high up!
Sign: We had never seen this sign before; it describes a blind switchback (circle) to go UP (The road curves the opposite direction than the sign~ go figure!!) :) The road trip up to Mount Mitchell off the Blue Ridge Parkway was AWESOME.
Vegetation: The trees at the top (over 6000 feet)
were strangely mutated, dwarf and utterly windswept to the point of looking damaged. It gets very cold up on this mountain in the winter. Even in July, it was almost a full 20 degrees cooler at 6000-ish than lower in the mountain range.
Queen Anne's Lace: We saw a giant variety of this plant that must have been 5 times larger than ours at a mere 4000 feet. It was huge.
Mountain shots: The mountain mist/fog rolled in past 5000 feet. In each shot, Mount Mitchell is the mountain in the back! It is massive and well above the lower peaks.
Yes: We will go back!