Is There A Mini Dealership Around Here Or Something?

Greetings all!  I'll start by apologizing for my late post, it's been a fairly active day, despite the weather.  The rain has been coming off and on all day, but it really isn't slowing anyone down around here.  A lot of the Mini drivers have arrived today, and the village is starting to fill up with Mini Coopers.  There are hundreds of Minis driving around the village now, and people are starting to make the (safe) assumption that everyone is here for Minis On The Dragon.  Just as I sat down here to write this I had a couple from Florida walk up to me and ask me if I was a Mini driver.  It's an incredible group of people.  I've been wandering around with Jay meeting all of his friends from the Michigan club, and I'm constantly amazed by the people.  It's such a diverse group of people, but all that matters to them is that they're Mini drivers, and that makes everyone instantly friends.

Fontana Village is really an incredible place to be.  The term "Village" is very appropriate.  It's a typical hotel, with normal hotel room, but then a series of cabins extends out from that, reminding me of the Killarney Mountain Lodge.  The only difference is that there are dozens of cabins all along a series of winding roads, literally forming a village.  Here's a shot of our cabin in the village:

It's a great place, and we're really enjoying being here.  The weather has been rough this whole trip, but the forecast is calling for a dramatic improvement over the course of the next three days.  The rest of the time we're here is supposed to be sunny, and increasingly warm.

The drive here was quite the experience as well.  Since the Dragon is closed due to the rockslide at its Northern end we took the Cherohala Skyway in to the area.  Here's a picture of the road from one of the rest stops:

Picture miles and miles of just that.  Up and down, side to side.  It's quite a wild ride.

Here's a view from one of the rest stop of what the un-paved portion of this region looks like:

Now that's what I'm here for!

Today Jay and I went out to Fontana Dam to take some photographs.  It was a bit rainy, but we got a bit of a break and it wasn't coming down too hard.  Fontana Lake, created by the dam, is spectacular, and just getting this brief view of it makes me want to come here again on a paddling/hiking/camping vacation.

This evening has been spent hanging out with the Mini drivers.  The group from Washington D.C. put on a spaghetti dinner for everyone.  A couple Mini drivers showed up to their cabin:

Yup, those are all Minis.  I've been spending a lot of time getting to know everyone, and it's got late here.  I'm going to wrap up this day shortly, but I wanted to check in first.  Enjoy the meager, and cloudy photos, I'll do my best to post some sunnier ones tomorrow.