3. Blue Ridge Parkway (updated)

Tuesday, July 9th - Today we drove up the first section of the Blue Ridge Parkway, about 90 miles, as far as Asheville, NC.  Beautiful drive, no rain but a lot of low level clouds moving through and sometimes obscuring the scenery.  The first 2 photos are of a couple of the overlooks and the third is of a stream we hiked down to.

We arrived in Asheville at about 4 PM and went straight to the Visitor's Center where we picked up tickets for touring the Biltmore Estate which was the home of the Vanderbilts.  The house was closed by that time so we did tour the gardens and visited the winery.  The photo below is of the Arboretum and

Next photo is of one of the flowers in the arboretum.  Not sure what kind of flower it was but it did look interesting.

The next is some type or orchid also in the arboretum.

This next photo is of the rose garden.  Not as impressive as the one we saw in Portland, Oregon but still pretty nice.

Above the rose garden was another garden with various annual flowers.

This last photo is of the outside wall of the garden and down at the end the modest cottage that they built for the head gardener

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