I basically finished the northern half or so of the Blue Ridge Parkway today. The Virginia half felt really different from the North Carolina part; there was only one tunnel. There was also a decent chunk (15 miles or so) that was closed due to road repairs. So that's kind of a bummer from my kinda-completionist (completist?) standpoint, but I still had an enjoyable time and got to take in some tremendous views.

I especially liked this watermill scene — and even more the notion that groups from Connecticut and Iowa may have appropriated it!

I stopped at the Peaks of Otter Lodge for a cup of coffee and was enjoying it looking out at their little lake, when I overheard an older gentleman talking with his crew, and they seemed to have some connection to aerospace. He had a story about how he'd known with another guy for a lot of years, and they first met "in this small town you've probably never heard of, St. Marys, Ohio, on the western side." I gawked. "It looks like this guy knows about St. Marys!" I  wish that I had been sharp enough to say, "yeah, the home of Galen Cisco" (a former MLB player who is noted on the "Welcome to St. Marys" signs), "I miss the Golden Steer" (although there's another nearby that got national attention for kindness to truckers during COVID) or "I loved the Neil Armstrong museum in Wapak" (which would have been a shibboleth, since despite what Wikipedia and the trucker on the podcast say, St. Marys people don't say the full name of Wapakoneta).  I said my mom was from there, and not being totally sure what his history was, that my grandmother was a teacher there. They were unimpressed and said that the lady in their group used to be a teacher too. Epic fail at ingratiating myself into their conversation. At least the coffee and the view were good.

The northernmost 98 miles of the parkway have a lot of overlap with the Appalachian Trail. It was fun to keep seeing signs like this all over!

I  liked how there's a House Mountain. Given the age of the park, I don't know how they named it for an awesome but much more recent TV show (or horror movie), but it was pretty nice attention to detail to make the sign look weathered and appropriately aged.