we ended up not staying in lenoir for very long. the two weeks in the outer banks preceding it, combined with upcoming halloween and a visit from my parents caused us to cut it a bit short. but, we packed in a few good hikes (previously blogged), took some good drives, and had quality downtime.
on our first day, a saturday in peak leaf season, we knew that it would be PACKED everywhere, so we decided to just hop on the blue ridge parkway and see what happened. we drove along and it was pretty enough from the road, but we ended up stopping at a few pullouts to take some photos and goof off a bit.
not sure this is “peak”. 
woolly worm finding. 
cutest leaf peeper.
hollow tree shenanigans. 
not interested in shenanigans.
fall leaf selfies. 
horseplay. 
sibling horseplay.
fun fact. on our first date, 18 years ago, derek and i drove to the blue ridge parkway to check out some leaves and we have one photo to commemorate the event. one of the stops we made was in the exact same spot as the first date photo, so we attempted to recreate it. this time, we had a kid snapping the pic, but back then it was on a timer and propped in some grass apparently. it was long before cell phone cameras and the like, so we weren’t as good at taking photos of ourselves as we are now. and of course our kids needed to be in their own awkward photo in the same spot.
ruby loves the great outdoors.
at camp, we were thankful for full hookups so we could cook elaborate breakfasts and run the space heaters. also, we could take showers as often as we liked, which for some of us is never, despite having written all over our bodies.
during the afternoons the sun shone down through the trees on our little slice of campground (the lenoir campsites have really nice decks at most of the sites), so we tried to soak it up as much as possible. reading. new playmobil from the toy store in blowing rock. sleeping if you’re a dog. and painting.
before we left, we attempted to catch a sunset at a spot on the blue ridge parkway where we saw a pretty great one last time we were here. while we waited, there was horseplay and selfie taking, as usual.
the conditions for a sunset weren’t great but it wasn’t all that bad. but as we left, the sky in the other direction was pretty lovely, so all was not lost.
and that’s end of our rv vacations and travels for now. upon our arrival back in pfafftown, we cleaned the rv out, winterized it, and put it in it’s wintertime spot.
I guess it is a bit sad to winterize the camper, but glad you got in a good last trip.