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Cleaning out drawers and clearing piles of paper off a desk are wonderful ways to find long-buried, but still useful, information.
Case in point: A forgotten fax that tells of a new (well, it was new this time last year) Internet site that offers a cornucopia of information for those planning trips along the Blue Ridge Parkway.
The good news is that the site is still functional, with lots of maps, both old and new, and listings of cities along or near the scenic highway. It features a links to the Web sites of large and small newspapers (including The Sylva Herald) in towns located close to the Parkway so potential visitors can learn more about the countryside they'll be traveling through.
The site, www.BlueRidgeSkyline.com, was launched to help the 23 million or so folks who visit the Blue Ridge Parkway each year navigate their way through the most-visited park in the U.S. It covers the entire 469-mile length of the breathtakingly beautiful corridor that stretches from Front Royal, Va., to Cherokee and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
"Until now, people planning trips on the Parkway and (Virginia's) Skyline Drive had to visit 50 or more Web sites to find information about lodging, eating, exploring and entertainment in the dozens of towns along the Parkway," said John Nunn, who created the site in August 2002. "Now they can get all that information from a single source."
BlueRidgeSkyline.com divides the scenic road into 12 logical segments, with each segment containing detailed maps and listings of points of interest, businesses and attractions.
Web site visitors can browse through 20 different categories, including restaurants, shops, galleries, hotels, motels, campgrounds and indoor/outdoor entertainment destinations.
It even has a category called humor. There may be writers out there who could resist clicking the link labeled "The English Language," but yours truly is not one of them.
Included among the English-language humor was a collection of short sentences that amuse due to the quirk in our language that allows the same word to mean different things and/or be pronounced in different ways.
A few examples:
1) The bandage was wound around the wound.
2) The farm was used to produce produce.
3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4) He could lead if he would get the lead out.
5) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
6) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
7) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
8) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
9) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
10 After a number of injections my jaw got number.
In summing up, the unknown author had this to say about the language that gave rise to the above phrases.
"Let's face it – English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig."
It's hard to say exactly what that particular sample of humor has to do with the Parkway, unless those preparing the Web site thought such sentences would be good to savor during a lengthy road trip.
In any event, BlueRidgeSkyline.com is full of both useful trip-planning data and interesting surprises, and, fortunately, given my slowness in passing the information along to our readers, its Parkway travel information is still up to date and useful.
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