Blue Ridge Parkway

This weekend I went to visit my brother living near Charlotte. It's a 7 hour drive one-way but I decided to make it an even longer drive by taking the Blue Ridge Parkway part of the way. Of the 465 miles, I drove roughly a 100 of it on the way down, and another 100 on the way up. I covered just about all of the Parkway in Virginia from mile 0 to 200. It was an absolutely beautiful drive, with nice views from overlooks, as well as hikes and points of interest off the parkway. The best part was, there was absolutely no traffic on there even though it was a holiday weekend. Park rangers say it takes roughly 3 hours to drive 100 miles of the Parkway (at 45 mph speed limit), but I reckon I fared a bit better on the speed. I don't think the detour added too much time to the drive.


Once at my brother's place, we ended up taking a day trip out to the Blue Ridge Parkway in NC. We started off in a place called Blowing Rock around mile marker 300. There's a nice view there, but it's a bit of a rip off since you had to pay $6 to get in. There's a lot of nice places off the Parkway to see for free. For example, the Linn Cove Viaduct was pretty neat to see. It also had some nice trails around there. Finally, we ended the day at Grandfather Mountain, another over-priced tourist attraction on the Blue Ridge. This one was $12, but did have a lot more to offer. In addition to the views and trails you can get elsewhere for free, there's a scary swinging bridge you can cross to go see another view. There's also a nature center and animal habitat where you can see a bear (in case you don't get to run into one on your hikes), otter, deer, and Eagle. Despite the touristiness of it all though, it was a great way to spend time with my family. I'm sure we will be back on the Blue Ridge again next time I visit. I'm certainly looking forward to the fall foliage there.


Photos here.