Like countless other Blue Ridge Parkway motorists, I've peeked over Wildcat Rocks in North Carolina's Doughton Park to marvel at a tiny cabin sitting 1,500 feet below in a postage-stamp meadow. It's the quintessential image of Appalachian isolation.
One glance down at Caudill Cabin is all you need to realize why many 1930s residents of Appalachia simply didn't believe that a modern road like the parkway would ever penetrate their area: Mountain families like the ones that populated the cove around the cabin were still reaching their homes by steep, primitive rocky roads and trails.
The Blue Ridge Parkway, arguably America's most scenic road, did find its way through eastern America's highest mountains. Construction started in September 1935.
People tackle bits and pieces of the parkway, and that's easy to do. But this year - the parkway's 75th anniversary - is a great time to devote a week or more to make the entire 469-mile journey. And no faster than the posted 45 mph.
This is a linear park, a protected corridor a half mile or so wide, with larger tracts such as Doughton Park that bulge out periodically to encompass ecosystems. This spectacular, billboard-free, beautifully manicured road is almost continually at the crest of one ridge or another. It winds, climbs and dips with a new view every few feet, it seems.
The parkway is an Appalachian Trail for cars - a motorist's experience - but distinctive "leg-stretcher" trails entice even the sedentary out of their cars and into the woods. Best of all, the road passes many other parks on a route often wrapped in hundreds of thousands of acres of national forest land.
Drive north to south to follow the numbered mileposts and don't miss these high points along the road.
Humpback Rocks
Head west on Interstate 64 from Charlottesville, Va., and the Blue Ridge is a soft blue rill on the horizon. Take the Shenandoah National Park/Blue Ridge Parkway exit and the parkway starts its journey south along a striking spine of summits.
At the road's very first recreation area, Humpback Rocks, the visitors center tells how mountain families lived in the convoluted log structures found outside on the easy, half-mile, handicapped-accessible Mountain Farm Trail (MP 5.8).
Humpback Rocks is just across the parkway (MP 6), and if you can hike a steep mile up (and down), there's no better view. The entire northern Blue Ridge spreads out around the rocks' two cloven crags. West lies the patchwork quilt of the storied Shenandoah Valley. East, past Jefferson's Monticello, the Virginia Piedmont ripples away to Richmond.
James River
Heading south, stop at Yankee Horse Overlook (MP 34.4) and take a 0.2-mile walk to Wigwam Falls. You'll cross a section of track from a long-gone logging railroad. Stroll to where the rails stop and the rail bed fades back into the forest. You'll marvel at how a century can turn forest destruction into a trail.
About halfway to Roanoke, Va., the parkway dips to its lowest point at MP 63.2 (646 feet) where the James River cuts through the mountains. A pedestrian bridge leads 0.4 miles out and back across the river to where one lock lingers on the 160-year old James River & Kanawha Canal to show how early commerce pierced Appalachia.
Peaks of Otter
The parkway crests at its 3,950-foot-high point in Virginia at MP 76.7, and at MP 85.9 the dual Peaks of Otter rise just east of the parkway. Conical, rock-capped Sharp Top is one of the region's most iconic summits.
The popular Peaks of Otter lodge offers food and lodging, all with views of Sharp Top reflected in adjacent Abbott Lake (MP 85.6). Stroll the mile around the view-packed lakeshore path, or start on the west side of the parkway, at the Sharp Top Visitor Center (MP 85.9) and take the easy 2-mile loop of the Johnson Farm Trail. Costumed interpreters at this preserved 1930s farm show how a real "Walton" family lived in the years after log cabins.
Consider the Sharp Top Trail, a steep 3-mile round-trip hike to an awesome vista that starts near Peaks of Otter Campground. Or take the modestly priced bus ride up the pointed peak. (It's far easier to make the hike down.)
Rocky Knob Recreation Area
The parkway glides through into southwestern Virginia, where the Blue Ridge rise again and spread out into a lofty plateau.
Pull into Saddle Overlook at MP 168 and take the easy. 1.1-mile loop hike over Rocky Knob.
If you're a backpacker, ask a ranger for a permit and take the gradual Rock Castle Gorge Trail into the scenic valley east of the parkway. Great campsites lie .3 miles along the trail, where a Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps Camp once employed mountain residents.
Picturesque Mabry Mill demands attention at MP 176.2. Exhibits highlight early/primitive mountain industries (including moonshining).
There are weekend mountain music concerts at the mill, but one of the parkway's newest facilities, the Blue Ridge Music Center (MP 213), memorably explores the ongoing Appalachian contribution to the nation's musical heritage.
Exhibits trace mountain music from 1700s British Isles ballads to the 20th century emergence of bluegrass and commercial country music. Musicians play there daily.
North Carolina is just five miles south.
Doughton Park
Doughton Park is a major bulge in the parkway. Meadow-covered crests on both sides of the road lend the area an alpine feel. Not up for the long hike to Caudill Cabin? Stop on the roadside at MP 238.5 and explore Brinegar Cabin, owned by a not-so-nearby neighbor of the Caudills.
The Boone area
Boone and Blowing Rock (MP 291.8) embody the N.C. High Country, with cool temps, lofty vistas and towering elevation changes amid the East's highest peaks. The parkway soars across craggy Grandfather Mountain, North Carolina's newest state park, traversing the viaduct span where the parkway's last "missing link" was completed in 1987. Look out at the viaduct from boardwalk viewpoints on the Tanawha Trail at Rough Ridge, a moderate 0.6-mile round trip (MP 302.8). A handicapped-accessible paved path leads below the span from the Linn Cove Parking Area (MP 304.4).
Moses Cone and Julian Price Parks are highlights of the parkway near Blowing Rock. Easy carriage roads invite walks under towering trees, up to grassy mountain meadows, or around a variety of lakes. Industrialist Moses Cone's impressive manor house is home to the Parkway Craft Center (MP 294).
Easy trails lead to spectacular waterfalls at The Cascades (MP 271.9), Linville Falls (MP 316.4) and Crabtree Falls (MP 339.5). Crabtree Falls is perhaps the prettiest cascade on the parkway.
At MP 355.3, take a side trip to Mount Mitchell, the East's highest peak at 6,684 feet, where a new and rustic ramp-style summit tower offers 360-degree views.
The Southern Appalachians
From Mount Mitchell, the parkway plummets down to artsy Asheville (MP 384.7), passing part of North Carolina's Mountains-to-Sea Trail - where the Obamas enjoyed a hike on their visit to the city last spring.
The Folk Art Center is the parkway's major crafts center (MP 382). Nearby, the Parkway Visitor Center, a new, "green" structure with a meadow on its roof, is a multimedia resource for travel information and insight into the parkway experience (MP 384).
The last big section of the parkway beckons on the dramatic climb up to Mount Pisgah, where there's a parkway inn, campground and picnic area (MP 408.6). The vast jumbled topography of the Southern Appalachians carries the road to its end in Cherokee, the East's largest Indian reservation, at Great Smoky Mountains National Park (MP 469.1).
The highest point on the parkway - 6,047 feet - comes at Richland Balsam (MP 431.4). But first pull into Haywood Jackson Overlook (MP 431) and look out north to see Cold Mountain, which supplied the title and conclusion of Charles Frazier's award-winning novel and movie. The best-seller is the choice for reading on a parkway trip, and a rich symbol of the enduring literary appeal of the region.
From Haywood Jackson Overlook, take the mile-and-a-half Richland Balsam Self-Guiding Trail. Grab the trail's interpretive brochure at the start and head up into aromatic evergreens to appreciate why the mysterious ebb and flow of breezy fog is more reminiscent of southern Canada than the South.
Keep an eye out for the massive green wave of the Great Smokies as they rear up on the western horizon.
