Rest of D.C., Thanksgiving in Baltimore, and the Blue Ridge Parkway

So because it's rainy and cold outside, we broke and found a Best Western in Asheville, North Carolina, and now we're watching Ray. It seems we go through alternating periods of activity versus vegging out.  We continued biking around D.C. and visiting the museums, meeting and making friends, and eating fantastic food. The trend continued when we got back to Baltimore, minus the biking, so I'm relatively certain that we've gained some pounds in the past couple weeks. That's okay. For thanksgiving Katie and Jacob bumped their celebrations up a day so that we could stay with them and feast. They smoked a turkey. We all prepared sides, desserts, breads... And drank wine out of a re-purposed paint can. We ended the night yelling at each other over games of Taboo and Cranium, and watching A Fish Called Wanda.
Next up on our itinerary was the Blue Ridge Parkway. We managed to find a campsite, run by a lady who was getting ready to shut down for the weekend. I think she was a little confused about our presence on Thanksgiving Day. She asked for a last name in case anyone called asking for us... Maybe she thought we were runaways? After a night there, during which I did not sleep well because the ground was really hard and rocky, we went to Shenandoah National Park and drove the whole Skyline Ride, the first 105 miles of the Blue Ridge Parkway. The views were beautiful, and I'm counting down until June as I've pretty much made up my mind to come back and see it with the flowers in bloom and the leaves on the trees.
That intention has remained steady as we've continued along the Parkway, passing rhododendron and laurels. We stopped in Boone to visit a friend of mine and see the town, which is beautiful and full of hippie shops and eateries. We made a rather poor decision this evening to take the Parkway from there to Asheville. The fog got so thick we could hardly see the lines, there were no views of the valleys, but after three hours of perseverance and David's careful driving, we finally got to Asheville. What we do next depends on the weather. Originally we wanted to see the Smoky Mountains, but there's snow in the forecast. The weather stations are making a big deal of it here, but after the past winter that New York had I don't think any of us are that scared of it. We shall see. :) It's a shorter post because I'm overwhelmed at the thought of everything we saw in the past week and a half, hope y'all don't mind.
~Alicia