Parkway is soothing — and also wild

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Aug 21, 2005 | by Janice Gaston Winston-Salem Journal

The Blue Ridge Parkway can soothe your soul, and it can kick your behind.

If you're riding in a car, the parkway can be your escape route from high-speed traffic and city noise. It's a fragile ribbon of road that runs along the crest of mountains and carries you through peaceful valleys and quiet hollows.

If you're pulling it on a bike, it is a monster that can challenge legs and lungs with its punishing grades. It can chill you with its cold breath and smother you with heat and humidity.

The road, born 70 years ago during the depths of the Great Depression, has matured into the National Park Service's biggest attraction. Around 20 million people visit each year to drive, ride, hike or just sit and enjoy the views. They come from all over the country and points beyond.

Some drive the length of the parkway, which stretches 469.1 miles from Rockfish Gap near Waynesboro, Va., to the Oconaluftee River near Cherokee, N.C. Others sample a short stretch.

Some continue north on Skyline Drive, which connects to the parkway. It runs 105 miles, the length of Shenandoah National Park.

A few weeks ago, John and Jackie Crone from Ashland, Ohio, pulled onto an overlook between mileposts 81 and 82 to enjoy the view of mountain ranges that stretched into the distance. The rugged landscapes along the parkway were created about 300 million years ago, when two continents collided.

John Crone sat on his motorcycle and his wife sat in a sidecar with their dog, Francesco, on her lap.

The Crones appreciate what the parkway represents.

"It's a real treasure for this country," John Crone said. "Those work projects during the Depression did a lot of good."

At the northern end of the parkway, views of green meadows and blue peaks stretched into the distance. On the roadside, a groundhog stood at attention. A hawk swooped low over a car. Glossy poison ivy dotted the ground and twined up trees, and foamy blossoms of mountain laurel showed pink.

At the W.J. Carter farm at Humpback Rocks Visitors' Center, Dinah Ansley, a park ranger dressed in overalls, sat on the porch of a log cabin and plucked a dulcimer. The tiny cabin once housed a family with seven children. Its furnishings included a bed, a loom, a table with a crude bench and a cupboard. Chickens pecked beneath the porch.

Although the rustic cabin fit the notion that parkway's designers had of how mountain people lived, parkway officials admit that some of the historical sites along the parkway are more about fantasy than fact. The farm meanders. Its buildings, assembled from various places, are not set up in a logical fashion for a working farm.

Farther south, Mary Lou and Cecil Long of Amherst, Va., stopped to look down on Buena Vista, Va. The Longs drove the parkway from end to end in 1958, "in some old heap," probably a 1950 DeSoto, she said. On this trip, they brought their grandchildren for a ride on the parkway after visiting Safari Park in Natural Bridge, Va.

The road sloped down as it neared the James River. Thick stands of ferns and meadows alive with butterflies lined the road as the parkway headed to its lowest elevation of 649 feet.

No billboards or signs marred the views, and no trucks rumbled along the road. The parkway is closed to commercial traffic.

As the parkway begins to climb again, signs warn of falling rocks. Fractures in the rock cliffs reveal their vulnerability. It's easy to drive for long stretches without seeing traffic. Sometimes, the only sound comes from birds deep in conversation.

Water provides the soundtrack at Fallingwater Cascades Trail, where a 1.6-mile loop takes visitors to a stream that rambles across moss-covered rocks and tumbles down steep grades. The big, flat rocks tempt visitors to sit and dangle their toes in the cool water or to jump from one to another. But beware. A slip of the foot, and the creek can claim you.

Peaks of Otter, where Sharp Top and Flat Top mountains rise above a valley and a glassy green lake, offers indoor accommodations, which are in short supply on the parkway. Inns have operated here almost continuously since 1834.

Exhibits at the visitors' center reveal some of the Blue Ridge's inhabitants, including bobcats, foxes, weasels, red-tailed hawks and great horned owls. The mountains also support 1,400 species of wildflowers, 34 kinds of salamanders and nine kinds of bats.

The parkway crosses into North Carolina near Cumberland Knob, where construction first began. A few miles past the border, newlyweds Daniele Robichaud and Jean Levesque, both 27, stretched out in the grass next to their motorcycles, their faces turned toward the sun.

"We're on our honeymoon," Robichaud said. "We're just taking a little break, enjoying the weather." Robichaud and Levesque, who live in Ottawa, knew they wanted to ride motorcycles on their honeymoon. They considered several possible destinations.

"This was recommended to us," Robichaud said.

The parkway had lived up to expectations, Levesque said.

"It's great, beautiful. The roads are nice, and people are nice and friendly."