33. Day 28 – Smoky Mountains and the Blue Ridge Parkway

Tuesday 12 September 2006

The sun was up but soon it became overcast. 

We departed at 8.55am and drove back up the road into the Smoky Mountains towards the Blue Ridge Parkway. 

This is definitely one of the premier drives in the eastern part of the United States.  Building of the Blue Ridge Parkway took place under the new “deal” in the 1930s as a Depression Area Public Works Program.  The Parkway actually took more than half a century in the making and is over 355 miles long.  Most people start in the north, to the south west of Washington, however we were joining the Parkway in the south.  It is bitumen all the way and even had expensive viaducts across small country roads and across any interstate highways.

There were lots and lots of tunnels as the road is built into the mountains with minimum environmental damage.  Of course they do have an advantage in this part of the USA.  In Australia if we were to build a similar road we would have huge cuttings of raw rock and earth that nothing would grow on.  Here, everything grows so it’s basically green right up to the road.  Trees are everywhere.  There’s Tulip Tree and Birches, Sassafras, Mountain Ash and Oaks.  There are even some evergreens including Virginia Pine, White Pine, Hemlock Spruce and Fir.

One of the most popular shrubs is the Rhododendron – both the Katawaba variety and the Rosebay variety.  Pip and I thought that Rhododendrons came from Nepal however it appears that they are native here too.

As we headed along the Blue Ridge Parkway the weather went from sunny to almost zero visibility with fog.  Every now and then we would stop and do a short walk but it was cold and we would disappear into the fog with only 100 metres visibility.  We decided, after persevering for a few hours, that we would drop off the Parkway and jump back onto Highway 40 through Asheville and then back onto the Parkway again.  Eventually we gave up because with hardly any visibility the driving was too difficult and we headed to the north-east onto Highway 81 towards Roanoke.  Dick was very keen to find the location where he’d been “lost” (Dick says temporarily misplaced) when he was flying his helicopter in terribly bad weather from Knoxville to Washington on his world flight.

The trees were just starting to turn into their autumn colours. 

We took one photo from the Big Witch Overlook, which gave an example of the magnificent area.  We really loved it even though the weather was not very good.  Then again, we were lucky because we had been travelling now for 28 days and this was the first real day of bad weather.

At Thunderstruck Ridge Pip took photographs while Dick went for a quick walk. 

There was no other traffic on the Parkway probably because everyone else had decided to head down to the fun parks at Pigeon Forge.  We were told that in the peak of summer it can take 3 ½ hours to drive the 29 kms from Cherokee to the Pass at the top of the Smoky Mountains – there are just so many vehicles around. It only took us 20 minutes to cover the same distance in reverse

For some of the time on the Parkway we were completely socked in with our headlights on. 

It was hard to believe that this magnificent forest had been heavily logged in the past.  Once again, everything was spotless – there was no rubbish around and the grass edges of the road were neatly mowed. Obviously Americans are proud of this magnificent area, and rightly so.

At one stage we dropped into the small town of Clyde to look at a military disposal store.  Dick wanted to see if he could buy an old World War 2 radio for his Flying Club House at Bowylie – unfortunately there was nothing available.

We stopped at the Folk Art Centre on the Blue Ridge Parkway and made ourselves a quick cup of soup and toast.  It’s great to have the inverter working.  It can be cold, foggy, overcast and 63° outside and warm inside the Earthroamer.

We headed down the winding road to Weaverville and then Asheville and turned onto Highway 26. We were quite frustrated when we headed off the Highway at Johnson to get fuel and found that the only gas station didn’t have diesel.  Then again, we should have understood that gas means gasoline, not diesel.  Finally, we came off at the next exit and filled up with fuel, this time almost enough to get to New York. 

It was still overcast and the temperature had risen to 76° F outside.

Once again, there were huge wide vehicles passing us.  Two vehicles, which looked to be about 15 ft wide with banners on the back saying “wide load” passed us at 80 mph on a downhill stretch, and we never caught up to them again.

We were now in the State of Virginia.  There are more signs telling us that our speed would be checked by radar and that radar detectors are illegal.  Virginia looks to be a State with lots of regulations, like Oregon. Maybe this is because lots of bureaucrats from Washington live there.

On our right was a huge Abingdon gravel crushing quarry.  It looked strange in the beautiful green, almost English looking countryside. 

We turned off at the Mountain Empire Airport so that Dick could get some aviation maps to try and work out where he went on his flight around the world in the little helicopter.  Looking at the charts he couldn’t work out how he actually found his way!  Remember those were the days before the Global Positioning System (GPS) and moving map displays.

Eventually we stopped at the Wytheville KOA Camping area for the night at the cost of $34.66.  It rained all night. Rather than cook dinner we ordered two steaks from the campground operators and they were delivered to the door of the Earthroamer.  Now that’s service!

438kms Today  11,515kms Total

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