#Parkway June 15

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North Carolina has some scenic drives including the Blue Ridge PARKWAY.

Driving on the this mountain highway is a happy place.

Tourism is big business in North Carolina. One big part of our tourism revenue in the state is going to the mountains in the fall and seeing the leaves turn their reds, yellows, and orange colors.

One of the best places to see the leaves do their transition in North Carolina is the Blue Ridge PARKWAY.

Here is a picture of my wife and daughter on a cool autumn day when we drove a portion of the PARKWAY east of Asheville.

The parkway is a route that extends 469 miles through the Virginia and North Carolina mountains, the Blue Ridge PARKWAY has remained what historian William Powell describes as a travel experience “never to be forgotten”.  Its elevation goes from 680 feet to over 6,000 along its route.

Colonel Joseph Hyde Pratt first suggested the parkway in 1912, but the complete mountain highway was not finished until 1987. 

Pratt who headed the North Carolina Geological and Economic Survey in the 1910s wanted the road—approximately 350 miles–to transverse through the Appalachian mountains, beginning in Marion, Virginia, and ending in Cornelia, Georgia.

As a public road free of industrial development and a park showcasing mountain views of the Blue Ridge, the parkway remains one of western North Carolina’s most popular tourist destinations and cultural attractions. According to the National Park Service, the first step in construction occurred on September 11, 1935, when workers started on a small part of the road near the Cumberland Gap.

Today the number of visitors to the Blue Ridge Parkway just in North Carolina approaches close to 10 million. I tell everyone that I meet that has moved to North Carolina experience two things the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Outer Banks.

Both places make me happy.