Blue Ridge Parkway and GSM Park

Today I drove 80 miles on the Blue Ridge Parkway from just outside of Asheville to the North Carolina entrance to Great Smoky Mountains National Park. (The Parkway is 469 miles in total.) I didn't intend to make that drive, but there I was at Mt. Pisgah with no biking trails and the entire afternoon ahead of me. Since I have a goal to visit all the major national parks, I decided to go ahead. The route along the parkway to the park entrance takes several hours, especially when you stop as I did at lookouts and paths to waterfalls. A person could spend weeks on all the side trails! At one lookout, I spoke with an older couple from Florida. I had my bike on the back of my car, and they asked if I was bike riding on the parkway with another woman they had seen along their way. I replied I was not. Then they went on to tell me that their son had biked across the country twice, the first time in 30 days! Well, that really got me thinking about the brave things that people do, and my road trip seemed small by comparison.

I continued driving. Needless to say, the scenery along the BRP is breathtaking. The mountains in the distance really do create a "blue ridge." For a while I listened to a recording by the Paul Winter Consort which seemed to match the mood of the landscape, but then I just drove in the silence. Along this stretch of the parkway there are periodic short tunnels through the mountain. A sign before each tunnel instructs drivers to turn on car lights. I didn't, at least not right away. I tried to see how far I could go in the tunnel before it was pitch dark and I got spooked. Most of the time I made it all the way through, but two longer tunnels required headlights!

Finally, I reached the entrance to Great Smoky Mountains National Park, though there was no grand sign to let me know I had arrived. There's no toll gate or park fee as per an agreement with Tennessee. There's a small visitor center, a rather sad replica of a Cherokee village area, and a federal road running through the park. It's a huge piece of open land- 800,000 acres. I didn't go deep into the park or to the highest peak for a 360 degree view which would have been another 45 minutes there and then back to the visitor center. Instead, I bought a lapel pin, a couple of postcards, and headed back to Asheville via the interstate. (http://www.nps.gov/grsm)

Tomorrow I drive home. I'm packed- clothes and lunch. Throughout my trip, there's been a noticeable absence of Starbucks, and I miss the familiar logo. So far the only one I've seen since I left NJ is one at the Biltmore Village.