Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah National Parks - August 2024

In early August I made another trip to Florida to visit Diana.  Florida is not a pleasant climate in August so we had planned a trip up into North Carolina and Virginia to hopefully escape a little bit of Florida's heat and humidity.  We planned to visit the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Shenandoah Valley, both of them National Parks.

The Blue Ridge Parkway

In Florida we just missed Hurricane Debby that had made land fall along the Florida panhandle the day before our trip.  While we didn’t face the brunt of the storm we did get a lot of wind and rain as it passed by us to the west.

Flash Flood Alerts

We flew from St Petersburg airport to Asheville, North Carolina where we picked up a car for the duration of our trip.   We arrived in Asheville a little delayed and it was already getting dark so we took the direct route south instead of the more scenic Blue Ridge Parkway.  Our first night’s stay was in Cherokee which is at the southern end of the Blue Ridge Parkway.  

Cherokee is the capital of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians.  We all know the terrible treatment that the Cherokees and other Indians received in the 19th century and one is made painfully aware of it this part of the world.   The area is very beautiful - forested hills, mountains, valleys and many rivers and streams.  The Indians after living here for thousands of years were pushed out and moved to Oklahoma, where, whichever way you look at it, it is not such a green and pleasant land.  Their forced exit was the so-called Trail of Tears.

By some quirk of circumstance a small band of Cherokees avoided the extradition and were able to buy land in and around Cherokee and their descendants now form the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation.  They are recovering money from the white man by partnering with Harrahs, the casino people, and operating a casino.  

We searched for a nice place for dinner and what came up was Guy Fieri’s restaurant.  He is apparently a TV chef but I hadn’t heard of him.  His restaurant turned out to be in the casino so we went in for dinner.  We just made it into the restaurant before it closed.  We were the last and only diners in the restaurant but we did have a pretty tasty meal (chili and clam chowder).

After dinner we were walking back to the car through the casino and decided to spend $5 on a slot machine.  These are not the slot machines of my youth, they are very complicated affairs now.  We found one that looked the most familiar (it had a handle which I thought would operate the machine, but actually it was completely decorative and served no purpose at all).  We were quite confused and actually asked a women walking by for instructions.  $5 turned into 500 units of play which probably you could play one at a time if you had the patience, but various options allow you to play multiple 1 cent tokens per spin so you can get through the money fairly quickly.  After some time with 250 units left the machine appeared to freeze and nothing worked.  We were baffled by the machine and had to again ask someone for assistance.  We had apparently won some option for playing extra free games and there was a completely different screen above the main screen that required input.  Once we figured that out the machine went into auto-play mode and played our free games winning us $7.50.  That was a doubling of our $5 investment.  We cashed out our $10 and escaped while we could.

We checked into our hotel, the Great Smokies Inn, a rustic log cabin looking place.  The air conditioner was running all night - something you have to put up with in the hot and humid weather.

The next morning it was mediocre coffee in the hotel lobby and a relatively early start on our way along the Blue Ridge Parkway.  As we gained some altitude we could look back to the south west and see the Great Smoky Mountains.  We will have to visit that National Park some other time.  

View over Blue Ridge Mountains and the Great Smokies

As far as we could see in the surrounding hills and mountains there were trees - a mix of evergreen and deciduous.  It all looked very green and lush.

There were many turnouts and view points along the way and it appeared that the parkway was designed to handle a lot of visitors.  Early this morning in August there were not so many people on the Parkway.  Later in the fall I understand it is bumper to bumper.

Highest Point on the Blue Ridge Parkway

Looking Glass Rock

The road was in great condition and we proceeded at a sedate 40 mph or so along the very curvy road.  Looking Glass Rock was particularly notable as was Mt Pisgah.  The weather was mostly blue skies but as we got higher we did find ourselves in the clouds.  At the highest point, just over the 6000 ft, it was quite foggy.  

Biscuit Head Cafe, Asheville

By 10:30 we were in Asheville again and we stopped for breakfast at a wonderful cafe, the Biscuit Head Cafe.  So called because the biscuits are as big as a cat's head.  We immersed ourselves in Southern Cuisine and had biscuits with bacon and fried green tomatoes - simply wonderful and one of the best meals of the entire trip.

The Jackson Building, Asheville

We explored a little of downtown Asheville.  It is quite a nice town with some  lovely old buildings.  One building, the Jackson Building, is referred to as an early sky scraper.  By today's standards it is not so tall, but it is a beautiful building.

Woolworth's

There was an old Woolworths store, which was now an art gallery but the signage remains, a nice Kress department store and many other older fine buildings.  

Historical Marker - John Humphries Lynching

There were many historical markers, most of which were commemorating the days of slavery and black inequality.  One marker was commemorating a lynching of some poor teenage black boy, wrongly accused.

The Biltmore Mansion

In the early afternoon we left the center of Asheville and went to the Biltmore Mansion and Estate which is just outside of Asheville.  This is one of the finest American homes of the Belle Epoque era built by George Vanderbilt, the grandson of the Shipping and railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt.  The impressive mansion sits in the middle of a wonderful park.  The grounds and gardens being designed by Frederic Olmstead (the architect of New York’s Central Park among other things).  

The Biltmore Dining Room

The Biltmore Library

We had booked a tour and we spent a delightful couple of hours touring the home and the adjacent gardens.  George Vanderbilt had a wonderful vision for this place and he executed it very well.  The house is like the finest English stately home, upgraded with the latest that the early 20th century had to offer - electricity, hot and cold water, fire sprinklers, heating, bathrooms with each guest room, a swimming pool, a gym. Sadly George didn’t live to see everything completed as he died in his 50’s from complications after an appendix operation.

The Conservatory

The Water Garden

The gardens, by Frederic Olmstead, were quite grand.  The long sweeping driveway up to the mansion, the lawn in front of the mansion, the Conservatory, the beautiful formal gardens and the water garden.  Once upon a time the estate covered 125,000 acres but today it is a more modest 8,000 acres - still a large and very impressive property

The Omni Grove Park Inn

We then went to visit the other gem of Asheville, the Omni Grove Park Inn.  This beautiful old hotel built by a Mr Edwin Wiley Grove in the 1800’s is simply spectacular.  Mr Grove made his fortune by developing and selling an allegedly tasteless quinine concoction to combat malaria.  Prior concoctions were notoriously bitter tasting.  At the time he sold more bottles of his medicine than Coca Cola were selling of their soft drink.

The Blue Ridge Parkway near Blowing Rock

Before nightfall we had to make it a little further along the Blue Ridge Mountain Parkway so we set off on our drive to Blowing Rock.  There were some beautiful views in the evening light.  There was a little rain too giving us impressive rainbows over the mountains.

The Blue Ridge Parkway near Blowing Rock

The town of Blowing Rock, named for the strong winds in the area and where the updrafts are so strong that the snow falls upwards in the wintertime.  We found it to be quite the cute tourist town with hotels, restaurants and manicured flowery streets.

Our hotel for the night was the Green Park Inn, an 19th century Inn, that was once perhaps the finest hotel in the area but is now struggling to compete with more modern offerings in the rest of the town.  The staff too were not very welcoming - at check in the sad looking receptionist made a point of listing all the things that we couldn’t or shouldn’t do or else we would be charged.  The next morning breakfast in the dark wooden restaurant was similarly unwelcoming.  I realize it is a struggle to keep an old hotel building going but the first thing they could do would be to hire friendly people to welcome guests with a smile and not a list of rules and regulations.

The weather was not cooperating now.  We had received several weather warnings about flash flooding and recommendations that all travel should be avoided.  We felt we really didn’t have an option other than to proceed and anyway we were driving the ridge line of the Blue Ridge Mountains - rain was running away from us on either side of the hill.  Hurricane Debby, which we escaped in Florida, had been proceeding very slowly north and while not a hurricane anymore it was bringing large amounts of rain to the Carolinas and Virginia.

We abandoned plans to hike to the suspension foot bridge (one of the sites along the way) and decided to continue our drive north.   A short distance north of Blowing Rock was the town of Boone and since Diana had a friend that owned a home there we diverted into the town to take a look.  It was a fairly large college town with a nice old historic district.  We didn’t stop but went back to the Parkway and our drive north.

It pretty much rained the entire day and it was some serious rain.  There were times when it seemed to be abating but then it would get dark and the wind would blow and the rain would pour down again.

It did make the drive quite interesting - lots of leaves and branches in the road and the occasional downed tree.  Fortunately nothing to prevent our progress until we got to a road junction where the Parkway was closed and traffic was diverted around.  

The diversion eventually took us back to the Parkway and we proceeded north to Roanoke.  We left the Parkway there to get a bite to eat in Roanoke.  

Roanoke was not the prettiest of cities.  It was relatively large and industrial but not really very inviting.  We went into the old center and found a place for lunch.  Not the greatest lunch either.  We did the biscuits, eggs and green tomatoes again but they were nothing like Biscuit Head’s in Asheville.

Back on the Parkway again we headed north in the rain and wind.  At times we were up high with the clouds below us, at times we were in the clouds, and all the time there was rain.  We came to one intersection and the Parkway was again closed.  We followed the diversion for quite some distance until we came into Waynesboro, our stopping point for the evening.  

Waynesboro was also a drab industrial town.  Google told us that the town is one of the larger superfund sites as a result of a DuPont spandex/lycra factory in the town.  Efforts are still underway to clean the place up.

We found a restaurant in the old Main Street (the Heritage on Main).  It looked pretty good and had a decent menu but the dishes (calamari and lamb) were just too different and not in a good way.

That night we stayed in a Holiday Inn Express in Waynesboro.  While Holiday Inn Expresses are all the same and lack character, they are all clean, efficient and have everything that you might need.  

Monticello

The next morning we set off for Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s house some 20 miles east of Waynesboro.   The rain had stopped and it was now quite warm and because of all the rain very, very humid.  It was not at all pleasant to be outside.

Jefferson's Study

We did the highlights tour of the house and gardens and it was most interesting.  Mr Jefferson, the second US President, was quite the well rounded man - a man of many interests.  Much was made of his slave ownership and his relationship with one of his slaves, Sally Hemings, who bore him at least 6 children.  Different times.

Jefferson's Bed in the Wall

Jefferson designed the house and added many interesting features - a 7 day clock, a wall bed, a dumb waiter just for wine bottles, an ice house, a smoke house for meat.  The tour was thoroughly enjoyable.

Main Street, Charlottesville

From Monticello we headed towards the nearby town of Charlottesville to have a look around.  Pleasant enough but nothing too exciting.  In the old part of town we had cake and coffee before going on to drive around the grounds of the University of Virginia (created by Thomas Jefferson).

Shenandoah National Park

It was then on to the Parkway which at Waynesboro becomes the Skyline Drive of the Shenandoah National Park.  At the entrance to the park they told us that we would not be able to drive through the park because there were downed trees.  We decided to go as far as we could go just to see what we could.  There was a lot of debris in the road and a lot of downed trees pushed off to the side of the road.  When we encountered some workmen clearing the road we were told that the road was now clear all the way through.  That was great news for us as we were staying that night on the Skyline Drive at a hotel near the highest point of the drive.

A deer unconcerned about a passing car

We had the luck to see a black bear running across the road in front of us.  A beautiful animal, jet black and shiny and moving quite nimbly.  There were also many dear on and around the road.  They weren’t at all intimidated by us and at times we could pull up right next to them.

View from balcony at Skyland

We reached our hotel, Skyland, late in the afternoon, only to find that the hotel was out of power.  That was unfortunate but the hotel was in a really nice location with great views of the Shenandoah Valley below.  It wasn’t so much a hotel as a collection of cabins scattered through the forest.  It had been built in the late 1800's as a mountain retreat resort.  While there was no power there was just enough water left for a warm shower.

Mimslyn Inn, Luray

Unfortunately the lack of power meant the restaurant was closed so we had to drive down into the town of Luray for dinner.  We stumbled upon a wonderful old hotel, the Mimslyn, with a great restaurant, Circa 31.  We both had a great meal and then made our way back up the mountain to Skyland where the electricity had still not been restored.  

Spotted Lanterflies

Interestingly in Luray, we parked our car next to a tree that was covered with colorful bugs that we later learned were Spotted Lanternflies, an invasive insect from China that is causing a lot of concern along the East Coast of the USA.

Sunset on the Skyline Drive, Shenandoah

The sunset views driving back to Skyland were quite impressive.

Next morning there was still no power but at least there was coffee and muffins in the reception area.  We continued on Skyline Drive north towards the end of the park.

Waterfall at  Lands Run

As we had time we did a little hike off the road down to a waterfall near Lands Run (mile 9 on the Skyline Drive).  It was a most pleasant walk down the hill to the waterfall, if a little warm heading back up to the car.

We then drove out of the park into Front Royal, the town at the northern entrance to the park.  Front Royal was kind of a cute touristy town with antique and bric a brac stores and coffee shops.  We had lunch in one, sitting outside watching the world go by and listening to the most annoying girl talking ceaselessly in a high pitched voice - she just didn’t stop.

The Shenandoah River at Morgan's Ford

After Front Royal we headed out to look at the Shenandoah River.  We found it a spot called Morgan’s Ford and the river was in flood.  It had at one time been flowing over the road bridge but now the waters had receded somewhat.  Nevertheless there was a huge amount of water flowing downstream.

Virginia State Capitol, Richmond

We then drove, mainly on the freeway, for a couple of hours to Richmond from where we were leaving that evening.  We parked in the center of Richmond and walked around the State Capitol complex.  There were some fine buildings and the Capitol park had many statues including an impressive one of George Washington on his horse.

George Washington Statue, Richmond

We then drove out to Richmond Airport, got rid of our car and caught our flight back to Tampa.  All in all, a great trip made more exciting by the remnants of Hurricane Debby.