For everyone else, sorry for the lack of commentary on the pictures thus far. I have been dead-to-the-world exhausted here lately, between the baby keeping us up all night, and work.....I'm just plain tired!
Anyway, the weekend was great. The weather was outstanding, sunny and cool. We kept things very informal, which was nice.
I arrived at the campground about 5:00 Friday afternoon, and made reservations for those on their way. Upon arriving at the tent sight, this dude from Colorado came up to me telling me how much he loved my "old Toyota". He was a real car buff, and he and his wife and two kids were traveling in an old 928 Porsche. Nice guy. He talked my ear off for about an hour about cruisers, and how he'd love to find one..... Lucky for me, he had a ton of firewood

..... I had banked on using charcoal to cook with, but the campground grills weren't setup for charcoal.
I got a fire started after all the cruiser talk, and Clint and Stacy arrived shortly after. Stacy brought a smorgasborg [sp.]of food with her! Totally hooked it up. Our camp dining was awesome thanks to her.
We got our tents setup, and ate, and drank, and BS'ed into the wee hours Friday night. Good times.
We kept it relaxed Sat. morning. No rush....just woke and milled around, ate some breakfast, and just generally chit-chatted and relaxed. It was really nice to just be away from the daily routine and chill out.
Eventually we all got ready to hit the trail...... but Clint and Stacy couldn't find their keys!! Yada, yada, yada....they were found.

......... My battery was weak in the 40, so I got a jump from Juan. I figured I left the radio on or something. I took the lead, and we hit the road. It wasn't a long drive from the campground to the trail head. As I was crossing some railroad tracks, I went to down shift and the motor died!

WTF! Right in the middle of B-F-E. Tried jumping it again....started and ran....as soon as the cable was pulled....it died. Long story short.....I pulled the battery and the alternator, and we drove to the nearest town with a Vato Zone, and they confirmed that the alternator was good, and the battery was not. So I bought a new battery. Two lucky breaks there......One: I hadn't gotten half way up the trail already, and two: If it was the alternator it would have taken until today[Tues.] to get a replacement!!
Sooo.... we finally reach the trail around 4:00 iirc.

A bit later than I would have liked...but better than the alternative! ......
The photo's I've posted are pretty random, but generally the dry uphill photo's are of the trail we took Saturday afternoon.
As I understand it, It's approximately 12 miles driven straight through without taking side trails. It starts at the valley floor and ends up at the top of the mountain at the blue ridge parkway. In my stock 40 at least, it's 1st low gear 95% of the way. Needless to say, it takes a while. IIRC, it took us maybe 5-6 hours?......I think we reached the parkway about 10:00-10:30?.....So we had our share of wheeling in the dark that night!

.............
We got back to camp, got cleaned up, and continued where we left off Friday with grillin', story tellin', and turning up some cold ones.