[ShrimpBurrito]

Years ago, back in our tent camping days, my girlfriend (who is now my wife) and I were both living in the Raleigh, NC area. We decided to head to the NC mountains to camp for the weekend, but we were set on simply "finding a nice place and sitting still for the whole weekend", but generally heading in the Blue Ridge Parkway area. HA! When we got on the Parkway, we just couldn't stop. Understand that it was already a few hundred miles from home, but we just kept driving and driving, covering a few hundred more miles of the Parkway. It was fantastic. I think you would really be doing yourself a disservice by taking I-81 instead.

This was before we explored the western part of the country, however, so I hope it really was just as good as my memory. The east coast in general does not have the dramatic features of the west, but it is still beautiful -- tall trees, lush green forests, and roaring streams. It's not that the west is better so much, but the landscape and beauty are just different. But I would definitely go back, and in fact we may do just that later this summer. The northern part, i.e. Skyline Drive, is nice, but not nearly as nice IMHO as southern VA and NC.

Highly recommended!

The end of the parkway is just a bit south of Asheville, and from there, I'd head over to the TM factory. It's just north of Knoxville, and probably a 2 or so hour drive.

Gettysburg is also very cool. If you have any interest whatsoever in the Civil War, or don't know much about it, plan on spending at least a day or two there. You can walk the very battlefields where more Americans were killed than any other war to date. And to put the magnitude of that war into context, the number of those killed is about 75% of all those killed in all other U.S. wars combined (from the Revolutionary War to the Gulf War).

A fascinating place.

Dave