Blue Ridge Parkway Day 2

Monday 30 October
We spent another glorious day traveling some more of the Blue Ridge Parkway, traveling northeast from Asheville to Boone where we spent the night - not a great mileage, but we stopped for a couple of short hikes, including to Linnville waterfall and of course at numerous viewpoints. At one of the viewpoints there were a couple of park rangers showing a bear pelt and related items, as a way of getting attention to warn people about getting too close to bears. Apparently there is one bear in particular that frequents this viewpoint who has lost all fear of humans, and some people have been encouraging it by feeding it and getting too close to get photographs. Later in the day I saw on local news that the Park service has actually closed an 8 mile stretch of the parkway, including this viewpoint, as they had been getting so many documented reports throughout the day of people getting much to close, one picture showing the bear checking out someone’s motorbike! So in the interest of safety, for people and the bear, they are temporarily closing the section, in the hope that without daft people around encouraging it, it will lose interest. People can be so stupid!
The temperature was a little cooler today, and even more so when the clouds began to move in early afternoon, and by the time we reached our hotel in Boone it was starting to drizzle. Tomorrow is going to be considerably cooler.
Step count: 10,772