Part 3 of our RV road trip to the Blue Ridge Parkway and other destinations.
Wednesday, Oct. 16
We’re southbound on the Parkway, driving through occasional pockets of thick fog in the mountains of North Carolina. We stop at the Northwest Trading Post store and buy stuffed animals for our present and future grandkids. (Shhh, don’t tell them.) Afterwards we hike the Cascades Trail in E. B. Jeffress Park. Jeffress was a newspaper publisher and politician during the time of the Blue Ridge Parkway planning stages. As chairman of the North Carolina Highway Commission in 1934, he was behind the push to get the Parkway to come through North Carolina instead of Tennessee.
It’s a very windy night. Chilly too, with temperatures in the upper 30s but we’re cozy in the camper at Down By The River Campground in Pineola, NC,
Thursday, Oct. 17
Another day of hiking, probably our favorite so far. We had hoped to hike the Grandfather Mountain ladder trail but upper regions of the park are closed today because of high winds. Instead we tour the wildlife exhibit in Grandfather Mountain State Park, hike two miles on a trail that parallels the Parkway, and drive to Linville River Gorge for hikes with a lot of elevation change. The views are great but the trail on the south side of the river is crowded with hikers. We continue to the more strenuous and less-traveled north side trails for outstanding scenic views of waterfalls. We follow that with a guided tour of Linville Cavern. I don’t think our guide is totally in the moment. He souns like a mechanical computer recording. At one point he even repeats the same sentence. But it’s an interesting cave tour anyway. At the end of the day we head back to Down By The River Campground for a second night.
Looks like you had clear weather to see Grandfather!
We did have clear weather that day. Too bad it was too windy. The road to the trailhead was closed.