This is a retrospective blog of my seven-week exploration of Virginia along with a journey through the Shenandoah National Park and on down the Blue Ridge Parkway to Cherokee, North Carolina. 'Retrospective' means simply that it wasn't written during the trip, but is being written after-the-fact, a little over a year later. Baaswell Sheep accompanied me and is writing the blog in the way he's done my later blogs, since he's so good with the color commentary. Unfortunately, since I didn't plan for this blog back when I was doing the trip, my pictures are limited to the major attractions, but I'll try to make those galleries a little larger than I do in my later blogs.
Select/click any image to see it at double (or more) the current size. While viewing a large image, use the left and right arrow keys to view other images on this page. Select/click on the large image or any part of the darkened area, or press 'Escape', to return to the blog page. Note: Table of contents is now located at the bottom of the page.
After fueling up at a Bojangles, we reentered the Parkway and headed south to our first stop, the Linn Cove Viaduct. Believe it or not, we're actually well over halfway down the Parkway now, the midpoint being just 17 miles south of the Virginia / North Carolina border. Of course, with the 84 pictures I posted two days ago, you might have been thinking we'd be even farther along than this. In any case, the Linn Cove Viaduct is one of the highlights of this Blue Ridge journey, for when we came through the area fifteen years ago, it was foggy as could be and we couldn't see anything of the viaduct, which is really a fancy, highly engineered bridge to bring the Parkway around the base of Grandfather Mountain without disturbing the local ecosystems. It was the very last part of the Parkway to open, and every individual beam was carefully speced out, no two pieces being identical. Today, we got a real treat, as the weather was absolutely gorgeous. We drove over it and back, then parked at the visitor's center and hiked a trail that runs alongside it from one end to the other, letting us get some really nice pictures of the construction and really see how it carefully follows the terrain below. Once we got to the other end, we tried to get some of the shots that you see on postcards, but it turns out you either have to go off the road (which may not be all that kosher) or have a really good zoom lens to get those shots (which, alas, we don't have). So, my companion did the best he could under the circumstances. The best of the bunch is the featured image for the entry, over to the right.
Just a dozen miles south of the Linn Cove Viaduct are the Linville Falls. This is one of those places that's part of the Parkway, but not right on the Parkway: you drive about half a mile south of the Parkway to get to the parking area and visitor's center. My companion decided to hike down to the plunge basin area first, then he returned to the visitor's center and hiked up the the more popular trail to the overlooks, which really put into perspective how high up he had gone from the plunge basin way, way, way down below. No wonder his feet were hurting tonight! Still, the views were wonderful and he got some really nice pictures.
Plunge Basin Views
Upper Falls (and the hike to them)
Upper Overloook Views
Blue Ridge Parkway: Glassmine Falls Overlook - Milepost 361.2
In spite of the name, we never actually spotted a waterfall from this overlook, but the view was pretty nice, and it's always interesting to try to speculate about a barren spot in the middle of a forested hillside. There's any number of reasons why such a spot could be barren, and we never could come up with a good, solid reason for this one, but it was definitely noticable.
Blue Ridge Parkway: Craggy Pinnacle Summit Trail - Milepost 364.1
The Craggy Gardens area has three stops: a picnic area at the far western end, a visitor's center and easy hiking trail out to the picnic, and a harder Pinnacle Summit trail accessed on the eastern end of the area. We stopped at the Pinnacle Summit parking area (labeled as View Craggy Dome) and decided to hike up to the pinnacle summit to watch sunset. Well, we weren't the only ones with that idea, so we had to hunt around a little to find a comfortable place to stand that wasn't too close to other people. Ultimately, we found it too uncomfortable to wait around for sunset to happen, but we got to enjoy some great views before we returned to the parking area. We went on around to the visitor's center, but it was late enough that we didn't have time to explore the trail there. Hopefully we can get back to it some other time. In the pictures below, the building by the parking area is the visitor's center, viewed from up on the pinnacle summit.
We got to Asheville a little before dusk and decided to eat at this Italian restaurant off of US 74 near Tunnel Road. Hope they didn't mind that we were a little bit dusty from our adventures on the Parkway. The food was delicious, and plentiful, so we took some with us to have tomorrow night. We're staying in Asheville for two nights, and in a suite style hotel, so that makes it easy to store, reheat, and enjoy the leftovers tomorrow night. Tomorrow my companion is taking a break from the sight-seeing and attending an IT conference, so it will be a quiet day for the blog, but we'll be doing a nature hike with some folks from that group the day after, and then it's back to our Blue Ridge Parkway journey as we finish out the Parkway. At this point, there's less than a quarter of it to go, but it's some of the more rugged and in some ways interesting parts, including Mount Pisgah and the Pisgah Inn. So, the fun is far from over.
Please note that all restaurant and product names are used simply for referential purposes and links provided as a courtesy. Reviews are the sole opinions of the reviewer: no restaurant has paid to be listed here, and no restaurant is being explicitly endorsed. In other words, go out there, try them all, and form your own opinions!
After fueling up at a Bojangles, we reentered the Parkway and headed south to our first stop, the Linn Cove Viaduct. Believe it or not, we're actually well over halfway down the Parkway now, the midpoint being just 17 miles south of the Virginia / North Carolina border. Of course, with the 84 pictures I posted two days ago, you might have been thinking we'd be even farther along than this. In any case, the Linn Cove Viaduct is one of the highlights of this Blue Ridge journey, for when we came through the area fifteen years ago, it was foggy as could be and we couldn't see anything of the viaduct, which is really a fancy, highly engineered bridge to bring the Parkway around the base of Grandfather Mountain without disturbing the local ecosystems. It was the very last part of the Parkway to open, and every individual beam was carefully speced out, no two pieces being identical. Today, we got a real treat, as the weather was absolutely gorgeous. We drove over it and back, then parked at the visitor's center and hiked a trail that runs alongside it from one end to the other, letting us get some really nice pictures of the construction and really see how it carefully follows the terrain below. Once we got to the other end, we tried to get some of the shots that you see on postcards, but it turns out you either have to go off the road (which may not be all that kosher) or have a really good zoom lens to get those shots (which, alas, we don't have). So, my companion did the best he could under the circumstances. The best of the bunch is the featured image for the entry, over to the right.
