Blue Ridge Parkway: driving the scenic: follow this romantic ribbon of roadway as it curls through the mountains of Virginia and North Carolina

Travel America, May-June, 2004 by Jim Kerr

Just north of the Peaks of Otter Visitor Center at Mile Marker 80 in Virginia is a trail that leads to the Johnson Farm, an 852 homestead maintained by the National Park Service. While the easy hike to the historic hillside home features peaceful meadows filled with wildflowers rather than spectacular mountain views, the Johnson Farm is the very, essence of what the Blue Ridge Parkway is all about.

It took 52 years to complete the 469-mile road, which climbs and dips and winds through the Appalachian Mountains. The Johnson Farm, with its seasonal living history demonstrations, is only one of dozens of park orchestrated attractions designed to fulfill the parkway's mission of preserving regional culture while, in the words of its, landscape architect. Stanley W. Abbott, "revealing the charm and interest of the native American country."

During the Depression in the 1930s, the Blue Ridge Parkway was conceived as a public works project designed to put people to work. Beyond that, however, the $4-million road was to be a long, narrow garden that would carry people not only to breathtaking vistas and through wondrous seasonal changes, but also to prime locales of human interest as it followed a course up and down the mountains. The lowest elevation (649 feet) is at the James River near Lynchburg, Virginia; the highest point is 6,047 feet near Waynesville, North Carolina.

Exhibits at numerous visitor centers showcase the region's cultural fabric, as do landmarks like Mabry Mill, Brinegar Cabin, Moses H. Cone Estate, the Northwest Trading Post, and Johnson Farm. Near Asheville, North Carolina, the Folk Art Center at the Visitor Center is a living museum filled with the lore, flora, and crafts that typify this part of the country. Historic Waynesville, near the eastern entrance to Great Smoky Mountains National Park, abounds with art galleries.

For many travelers, the Blue Ridge Parkway is essentially and foremost a scenic, leisurely drive through the highlands as it connects Shenandoah National Park in Virginia to the Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina, where the resort town of Maggie Valley offers some of the Smokies' most photographed vistas. It is possible to enjoy the scenery and never get out of your car, except perhaps at some of the 275 scenic overlooks.

Most people drive the road in sections as a day trip or from one town to another, although it does not run through any towns. In fact, there is very little sign of urban life, except for the far-off panoramas of hamlets nestled in valleys below.

The parkway runs non-stop, albeit with a 45-m.p.h. speed limit, all 469 miles between the north entrance at Waynesboro, Virginia, to its southern terminus at the Oconaluftee Visitor Center Cherokee, North Carolina. Between these points there is not a single billboard, stop sign, or traffic light. Even the entrance signs to the parkway are subtle, and once on it, signs of commercial life all but disappear.

Instead, nature, in concert with a rural way of life, takes over. In many sections, farmers have become conservationists, using land adjacent to the parkway under perpetual restrictions. Split rail and natural log fences separate the road from pastures where horses and cows graze. The fastidious gardeners of this long, skinny national park not only mow the grass, they also tend to the many species of endangered wildflowers such as trillium, iris, mountain laurel, day flower, pink lady's slipper, the Blue Ridge goldenrod, and three types of rhododendron.

While local craftsmen built most of the fences, Italian and Spanish immigrant masons artistically employed native stone to construct the arches of more than two dozen tunnels, along with hundreds of walls, overpasses, and bridges. Thousands of trees and tons of topsoil were moved for landscaping by the Civilian Conservation Corps.

It doesn't take long to shed the stresses of high-speed Interstate travel and get into the parkway's peaceful groove, whether you drive the entire length or just a few miles. The best way to see it, of course, is to drive the whole thing, preferably following the sequential mile markers from north to south, getting off to spend the night at a B&B in a nearby town or at a parkway campground. It's easy to spend a couple of weeks cruising through the misty Blue Ridge Mountains, the massive Black Mountains, the Craggies, the Pisgahs, the Balsams, and the Smokies. The only major decision, after distance, is what season.

The parkway is open as long as it's passable. But since it is not plowed or otherwise cleared of snow or ice, the Park Service closes gates that block impassable or treacherous sections. Some locals use these closed sections of the parkway for cross-country skiing, but since signs are never posted, a motorist can be surprised by having to turn back after many miles.

In spring the parkway blossoms to fife. Peak blooming occurs at different times because of the various elevations. Flame azalea is best south of Roanoke to Rocky Knob (Virginia) about mid-May and in the high areas around Asheville in mid-June. Mountain laurel blooms from mid-May to mid-June, and thickets of riotous catawba rhododendron spread from Peaks of Otter to Onion Mountain and along the bluffs of Doughton Park the first week in June, and in Craggy Gardens and throughout the Balsams after mid-June. Wildflowers grow and bloom continuously from April through autumn.