The spectacular Blue Ridge Parkway

Sometimes it’s just hard to describe a place, and this is one of those times. The Blue Ridge Parkway is a spectacular drive along the ridge of the Appalachian mountains, spanning 469 miles between Virginia and North Carolina. It connects the Shenandoah National Park to the north and the Great Smokey Mountains National Park to the south. We were fortunate that last night’s stop in Charlottesville is very close to mile zero of the parkway.

Services are extremely limited, so before jumping onto the parkway we stopped and got fuel. We had purchased an audio tour of Shenandoah and it included a tour of the parkway so we were able to start it right from the beginning of our drive. The narrator is great, and he not only describes what you are looking at, but he also tells stories about the area and the people who made this parkway happen.

Once again, we were practically alone! I’m guessing we didn’t see more than a couple dozen cars the whole day. That’s going to change in the next few weeks when the fall foliage is at its peak. We were lucky on our drive that some of the trees decided to turn early and we got to see some beautiful colors. Our plan today was to drive about 86 miles to a campground that has first come first served camp sites. The speed limit on the parkway is 45 mph. Sometimes it’s 25. With stops at various overlooks and visitor centers, it took us over 4 hours to make the drive.

To say the views are spectacular still doesn’t describe the beauty of this place. The vistas go on forever and the blue color you see in the mountains is actually a chemical produced by trees called isoprene. It scatters light into the atmosphere and causes the bluish hazy cast to the mountains.

Our campground is located in a place called Peaks of Otter. I’m still not sure why it’s called that, but a lot of the places here have odd names. We got a bit worried when we were about 5 miles from our destination because there was a sign saying ‘parkway closed ahead.’ Not a good thing as we would have had a long drive back to the closest road leading off of the parkway. Turns out the closure was right at the campground, so ‘whew’ we had a place to stay. Our plan was to continue on for a while tomorrow and then jump off the parkway to our next adventure. Because of the closure we will be taking a detour off the mountain from here instead. It was a long and curvy drive for Steve today, so we are both fine with the change in plans. As I looked at the rest of the parkway route, there are many sections in North Carolina are closed due to damage from last year’s hurricane Helene. I think we got the best of the parkway and I’m happy we got to see the 86 miles that we did!