Highway Hues: You Won't Feel Blue on This Vacation
The Blue Ridge Parkway's autumnal foliage beckons.
by Mary Best
Credit: George Humphries
Though we inevitably get to the most beautiful places in this country along strips of asphalt, rarely is that substance an essential part of a natural wonder. But when landscape architect Stanley Abbott was hired to design the Blue Ridge Parkway, a Depression-era public works project linking the Shenandoah and Great Smoky Mountains national parks, he stated his intention "to fit the parkway into the mountains as if nature had put it there." Construction began on September 11, 1935, in the mountains of North Carolina, and on the seventieth anniversary of what has been called America's favorite drive, Abbott's vision remains pure.
We are a nation of road rhapsodizers, and there's no better blacktop for lifting the spirits than the Blue Ridge Parkway. For me, in particular, the road in autumn exerts its spell -- perhaps because the season underscores the gravity of time, and Abbott's graceful creation has a way of slowing it down. In autumn, too, the light dances differently on this balcony of the southern Appalachians, one of the world's oldest mountain ranges. Or perhaps it's because, along its 469 miles, I spent childhood vacations, brooded during my petulant youth, and fell in love.
For me, growing up in North Carolina, a ride on the parkway was as much a family ritual as watching Fourth of July fireworks, or trick-or-treating at Halloween. We made our annual pilgrimage the second Saturday in October, and I enjoyed the peak of leaf season from the back of our station wagon. We began our journey where the parkway begins, outside the gates of Virginia's Shenandoah National Park, and meandered through an up-and-down landscape of sharp, forested ridges and bucolic countryside. We toured Mabry Mill and other landmarks of Appalachian pioneer heritage -- and filled up on heirloom apples.
When I grew old enough to drive, I spent countless Saturdays exploring North Carolina's High Country and some of the parkway's most dramatic signatures: the Linn Cove Viaduct, a 1,243-foot-long bridge that curves around Grandfather Mountain (and is one of the world's most sophisticated engineering feats); the Linville Gorge Wilderness, a deep cut that is considered the Grand Canyon of North Carolina; and Crabtree Falls, a 70-foot waterfall at Crabtree Meadows. From many of the parkway's seemingly innumerable scenic vistas, dogwood, sourwood, and black gum leaves dot the air like confetti, and I hiked along split-rail fences, crowded with rhododendron Abbott had meticulously placed.
Five years ago, I spent an October day with my future husband -- our first date -- on the southwestern leg of the parkway. We picked up the route outside Asheville, where it forges its way through a procession of ten tunnels in the rocky ruggedness of the Pisgah National Forest, visiting the heart of this half million-acre wilderness, where George Vanderbilt built the first forestry school in the United States.
The more we drove, the more at ease we felt, stopping frequently to savor the views from this section of the parkway -- notably those of Cold Mountain, 6,000-foot-high namesake of the Civil War novel and the subsequent movie, and the 500-foot sheer north face of Looking Glass Rock, a favorite of climbers.
We continued to the parkway's highest point, at Richland Balsam (6,047 feet), and passed through land that was once home to the Cherokee Nation, before reaching its terminus at Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Finally, we headed back for dinner at the Pisgah Inn, one of a handful of restaurants along the parkway. We have gone back every October since to watch the golden leaves turning, swirling, dancing, as if they, too, are falling in love.
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