The Blue Ridge Parkway runs for almost 500 miles connecting Shenandoah and Great Smoky Mountains National Parks. What makes it a parkway besides the fine scenery, numerous turnouts, and prohibition on commercial vehicles are the gradual gradients and mild curves. These al make it a far more pleasant drive than most mountain roads

I went the distance of the Parkway with my family in 1982 on the way to the world's fair in Knoxville . When I was 15 a world’s fair seemed like a big event. I’ve seen a handful of them by now, enough to view them as kind of a joke in our era of global travel and information at our fingertips. But when I was 15 I planned our family trip around going to one. And one mistake I made in the earliest stage of my travel guiding was to miscalculate the length of time it would take to drive the Parkway resulting in us arriving at our motel reservation in Asheville well after dark on a rainy summer night. But it was the beginning of my love affair with mountains. I’ve been addicted to them ever since.

Yes, it does take a long to drive the Parkway, especially if you make stops at overlooks and interesting sights along the way – Visitors Centers, a Folk Art Center, a Mountain Crafts Center, and Craggy Gardens (rhododendrons). This time I got onto parkway before 10:00 in Galax at the VA/NC border and didn’t get into Asheville until dusk at 7:00, and I didn’t do any majorly long hikes .

The Blue Ridge is what my friend Heinz would have characterized as a feminine landscape. The mountains are very rounded and tree covered to the top with the exception of a few hilltop meadows called balds. The Appalachians are said to be one of oldest mountain ranges in the world and were once taller than the Himalayas are currently before being weathered down. That geological fact always leads me to envision what the landscape around me would have looked like then. I’m sure the skiing would have been better than it is today!

The stops I made along the way include Grandfather Mountain where the last section of the parkway was only completed in 1987 with a viaduct that skirts the mountain and used European developed technology that was a first for the U.S. I vaguely recall the detour we had to take in 1982. Linville Falls is a busy stop along the parkway that involves short treks to several overlooks of scenic waterfalls.

By very late in the afternoon I made it to Mount Mitchell, the highest point in North Carolina and all of eastern North America. Mount Mitchell is part of a state park with a restaurant and lodge on the way up and a road that ends in a huge parking lot just short of the top. From the gift shops and snack stands it’s less than a 10 minute walk to the spiral ramp to a viewing platform that enables a better view over the stubby pine trees at the top. I drove to the top once before during my college years and recall being quite impressed then. The views for a huge distance in all directions are still magnificent, but a mountain with a huge parking lot near the top offends my sense of adventure.