Another iconic road to get us heading north ..
The Appalachian Mountains make for some great driving and the iconic Blue Ridge Parkway I mentioned yesterday is another “All American Road” – the designation for the most scenic of the national scenic byways.
These roads don’t allow commercial traffic so the speed limits are lower to allow for stops at the various overlooks along the way. We had to take a detour part way along the section we did as there had been a landslide which was blocking the road. The section we covered was about 130 miles.
The scenery along the way is beautiful and our weather was perfect. As well as the mountain scenery we stopped at Linville Falls. There was also a nice picnic area hearby so we stopped here for our coffee and snack break.
In many sections the parkway is very close to “suburbia” and there is some farmland along the way. We stopped at a “u-pick” apple orchard and bought some freshly picked apples – we tasty the 3 varieties on offer and settled on the Jonagold variety- very tasty !
As you will know from my blog we like the quirky and pop culture of our tours. We have a few “movie references” in this trip and we reached our first today on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Any fans of the movie “Forrest Gump” – certainly one of my favourites – will be familiar with Forrest setting off on a run – “That day, for no particular reason, I decided to go for a little run”. On this tour we find a few of those spots – and on the Blue Ridge Parkway there are a couple, though we baulked at the admission cost to go to the exact Grandfather Mountain location.
We arrived in Blowing Rock around 4pm and our hotel – Meadowbrook Lodge – and is just a short walk into town. The town is very much like Leura in the Blue Mountains – trendy shops, cafes, beautiful gardens and easily walkable. And even better the Blowing Rock Brewing Co was right in town !
Another great day – tomorrow we are off to another new state !
Your trip is bringing back some memories of our last trip in 2019. We did Charleston to Asheville and then onwards. We did do Grandfather Mountain, it was pretty cool. We had to stop on or way up on the Blue Ridge Parkway as Hudson got carsick and we had to strip him down on the side of the road. Its a beautiful part of the world, its a shame you didn’t see the gorgeous autumn colours, we would have been there about a month after you and got to see it in all its glory!
That’s great – we are actually further north in Vermont now and the colours are really changing. Hopefully we get a lot more in the next week or so we are across Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.