Blue Ridge Parkway

The Blue Ridge Parkway is a 469-mile road and one of the prettiest drives in the U.S. It goes from Smoky Mountain National Park in Tennessee to Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. It was built in the 1930's as a Depression-era public works project.

We picked it up near Asheville, NC and got off in the Cherokee Indian Reservation.

Entering:


Typical of the scenery. There are many overlooks, one at least every 3-5 miles along the way. The speed limit is 45mph along the entire parkway, and most of the time we were doing under that so that the driver (me) could see the scenery as well.


Lots of fun tunnels.


This is near the highest point of the parkway, 6033 ft according to the sign, 6047 ft according to the GPS, and I see 6047 according to a map, best two out of three wins. We had lunch at an overlook and our view was similar to this picture. There's a fire tower on the hill in front of us, along with some antennas.


Beautiful escarpments covered in green.


One day, we'd like to come back and travel the entire distance. We passed a lodge on the way, and a number of visitor centers. There were not as many bicyclists than I had expected.

One funny story -- back at the giant peach, we noticed a motorcyclist taking pictures of the peach when we were there. We especially noticed him because of the bright green fleece jacket he had on. At the last overlook before the end of the parkway, we noticed him again -- more than half a day after we saw him in S.C.