Tennessee to Virginia

We all were up and at em at 4:30am. We fixed some cheese and Canadian bacon english muffin sandwiches, made a pot of coffee and loaded up the truck. We hit the road around 5:30am - our trip was finally on the road! We traveled I-65 north to 840 to 40, heading to Knoxville, where we caught 81 North. We stopped in Wytheville, Va at Wendy's for lunch where Patti accidentally supersized her fries, not knowing Steve had already ordered fries. Steve told Patti she'd already reached her food quota for the day! haha!
We continued on 81N to 256, then 340, where we got beautiful views of the Appalachian Mtns. We made a pit stop in Grottoes at what we thought was the only gas station...unfortunatly the bathrooms were out of order. Luckily we did find another gas station down the road to use the facilities where the clerk was most enjoyable & entertaining to talk to!
Heading north on 340 to Elkton gave us continual views of the mountains and farmland. 

At Elkton we accessed Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park where we traveled on a high ridge with gorgeous mountain views on both sides of the road as it winds thru the mountain range. We often saw deer off the sides of the road along the way. There were overlook stops often, each with gorgeous views of both mountain and valley and we stopped for most of the overlooks. We were glad we nixed a large portion of Skyline Drive, as we would have never made it to our lodge before dark. 

We reached Skyland Lodge around 5:30PM, checked in and unloaded into our room, which overlooked the beautiful mountain range. There was a wedding reception going on close to our lodge room we thought about crashing it (just kidding), but decided we best head to the Dining Hall! We all needed to walk after riding all day, and we had nice paved pathways to get to the Lodge Gift Shop and Dining Hall, altho the hike up was quite steep! 
While waiting for a table, we shopped in the Gift Shop and looked at historic photos on the wall of the lodge area of Skyland. Behind our lodge room is a mountain summer home called "Massanutten Lodge", that was owned by Addie Hunter, a Washington, DC, divorcee who later married Skyland developer George Pollock when she was almost 40 years old. When they married, he had financial issues and she was said to be wealthy. Theirs was an interesting relationship that eventually floundered but is part of the overall history of Skyland.

We finally got seated at a window table with a nice view in the Dining Hall. The menu looked pretty good and was delicious! Patti had Clam Chowder, Steve had chicken strips (I'm pretty sure he eats chicken at every meal!) and Scott and I had slow cooked pot roast that practically melted in our mouths! After dinner we walked in the cool, crisp air back down to our lodge room to relax....3 watching a NASCAR race and one watching the stars outside for a meteor shower...however, it was just so cold out that I took a few star shots and headed back in to stay warm! The photo below is the view right outside our lodge room! 

About 3 minutes after my least favorite NASCAR driver crossed the finish line, it was lights out and the snoring from 3 people in the room started fast and steady!