Into the Mountains..2

Into the Mountains...1

When we left Beckley, WV on Saturday morning, I had no idea where we were heading into. There were some maps with us though and we headed into the generally intended southern direction to find a camping site.

We just veered off into the Blue Ridge Parkway from Roanoke, VA in the hope of finding a camping site. Things went surprisingly smoothly and not long after we were had found one! For a measly sixteen dollars, you can set up your home for the night. Each camp location is “furnished” with a hand pump for water, an elevated location to set up the tent and a grill. Pretty fascinating, eh!

While most experienced campers had set themselves up at elevated ground and within vicinity of each other, we felt wiser and set ourselves up at a lower elevation. There is no end to the sense of adventure, I guess. The whole exercise of setting up the tent was fun too, but the look on the faces after the set up was worth a million dollars. Four guys sleeping in that small tent! The big question facing us: is a Brokeback Mountain going to be scripted tonight?

The “enormity” of the situation was looking us in the face. We decided to head into the town to get some supplies; it was not a hotel we were going to be in.

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The law of averages catches up with everybody. We were no exception. Just as we headed back into the camp site after a soothing drive through the mountains, it started pouring heavily. The sun was just going over the horizon, but the cloud cover made sure it was really dark in just a few minutes.

As we parked the car and watched our abode for the night in the headlights, no one moved. It was raining really hard and none of us had any umbrellas or rain jackets. There was some wind too, and we had no idea if the unprofessionally put up tent would hold up. To top it all, we were all dying of hunger and there was no way we could get a fire burning in that rain. Wow, what a mess! We debated whether we should just fold up, go to the nearest town, and get an inn.

Rain gods finally had mercy and thankfully the rain abated. We finally started proceeding for the pet puja. The menu was exquisite (!): grilled corn, grilled potatoes, grilled chicken and grilled hotdogs. As the first batch of charcoal we had fetched burnt out without cooking either the corn or the hotdogs, I realized there was no way the whole food could be cooked with just the charcoal we had. We then started hunting for “reasonably dry” pieces of wood in that jungle using a single flashlight, hoping to not encounter any insects or animals. As we took turns for the hunt, one person was furiously fanning the fire, literally! Survival instincts, that is the term. Rain gods could not stand our perseverance, and skies opened up again. This time though, we were emboldened by our success. A steady fire had been set up, there was enough stockpile of firewood and we had been able to cook corn and hotdogs into something eatable. One of the guys took off his shirt and sheltered the kernel of fire while we went through the chores for the next round of cooking potatoes and chicken.
After feasting on burned corn, half cooked chicken and passable hotdogs, the most important frontier had been crossed. Ah the pleasure of a half cooked meal!

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The night was mostly uneventful, except for the one instance when some animal came looking for some food and prodded us in that hope (I think). Quite scary!

Thankfully it did not rain during in the night, although there was lot of dew. The dew falls in the jungle in a strange manner. There is a lull after which there seems to be wave in which the trees make a lot of sound and shed a lot of moisture; enough so that if you are in the open, you can get pretty much drenched after a few rounds. As four exhausted souls lay there, their bodies separated from hard earth by just a thin plastic coating, I listened to the medley of sounds coming from around me and dozed off to sleep.

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The Blue Ridge Parkway is called “America’s Favorite Drive”, and for good reason. The drive through the Blue Ridge Mountains extends for 436 miles (700 Kms), from Virginia into North Carolina. Going through the winding hills, one can actually feel the temperature drop as the elevation increases. They have made “watching sites” at the locations where you can park your card off the parkway and look into the valley for miles. As we drove through in our car, we encountered quite a few biking groups and felt envious; biking through the mountains would be far more pleasurable. On one of such stops, a middle aged lady had parked her SUV, rolled down her windows and was reading a book. What a novel place to immerse yourself into a book; talk about the pleasures of life!

The sceneries on a summer morning look stunning enough, although it did not escape my mind how colorful and heavenly this place would look during fall. Hopefully, I can be in such a place during fall.

Concluded