Hiking along the Blue Ridge Parkway! — To whoever is not listening to the sea

While we did hike other places, the majority of the trails we hiked this September and October were reached via the Blue Ridge Parkway. The Parkway, which is the longest linear park in the nation (fun fact!), was created during the presidency of Franklin D Roosevelt. It runs 469 miles from Shenandoah National Park in Virginia to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina.

Many of the hikes along the parkway are pretty short, at around 1-3 miles. We generally aimed for something longer, as the drive from our place in the city of Asheville was usually 30-60 minutes. Here's a quick round up of what we did.

Middle Prong Wilderness

The most memorable part of this hike in the Middle Prong Wilderness was the insane elevation gain —we were just about on all fours scaling up the dirt trail...which was equally fun on the way down. We abandoned the effort after about .75 miles and found a more civilized trail in the area, which had tons of butterflies! It was also where we were introduced to the Mountains to Sea trail.

The Mountains to Sea trail runs over 1,000 miles from Clingmans Dome in the Great Smoky Mountains in the west to Jockey’s Ridge on the Outer Banks in the east. We aren't interested in hiking the Appalachian Trail, but our time on parts of the MTS this fall inspired us to put it on our list, along with the John Muir trail in California.

Shining Rock Wilderness

For Curt's birthday, we hiked in the Shining Rock Wilderness area, which is the largest wilderness area in North Carolina. We came through this area many times over our two months in Asheville, accessing the area via the Black Balsam trailhead, taking the Ivestor Gap Trail and parts of the 30+ mile Art Loeb trail for many lots of day hikes. You really can't visit too often — it has great views!

Rough Ridge - Tanawha Trail

Our northern-most hike on the Parkway, Rough Ridge and the 13-mile Tanawah trail are relatively near Boone NC...so we actually took the highway to get there, rather than the Parkway. Most people stop at Rough Ridge, which is only about a mile from the trailhead and offers lots of rocks to sit on, with good views. We continued for a few miles on the Tanawah trail, but can't say we'd recommend it. It's mainly rocks and roots, so you really have to pay attention to where you put your feet!

Lots of flowers along the Tanawah Trail in September.

Black Balsam to Cold Mountain

For Paddy's birthday (Wendy's brother) we did our longest day hike yet at 17+ miles. We went from Black Balsam along Ivestor Gap Trail and eventually hit the Art Loeb trail which we took up to Cold Mountain. (See the route here). The first and last half were mainly flat, but the middle was all up-and-down! Wendy's favorite part of the hike was the field of quartz we passed through in the middle. We are happy to report that the next day we weren't even sore...guess all this hiking is starting to pay off.

Snowball Mountain Trail

This 8-mile trail is in the Craggy Gardens area along the Parkway, which offers a variety of fairly, short accessible hikes. This one, however, is not very accessible or easy! It starts by taking the Mountains to Sea trail from the Craggy Gardens picnicground (which has about 50+ picnic tables...it's impressive!) Our opinion — the best part of this hike is the first few miles up to Hawkbill Rock, which you have to scale basically on all fours. Very graceful! If we did it again, we'd turn around at that point. After that, it's mainly a steep descent, followed by a brief ascent to Little Snowball Mountain. Then you get to turn around and climb back up for 4 miles. It's a lot of work for the payoff; there are no views at Little Snowball Mountain. That said, this was our first hike with a glimpse of full fall color, so all in all, not bad!

Graveyard Fields

In case you were wondering about the name.

We were warned that Graveyard Fields is one of those places that is loved to death. It's a pretty flat hike with two water falls = it's popular. A portion of the trail at the outset (if you enter via the stairs near the pit toilets) is paved and there are wooden boardwalks in many spots, aiming to keep people on the trail, but also making it pretty accessible to people of most ability levels.

We got there before 9am on a 40-degree morning...there were people there, but it wasn't bad. When we returned around 11am the parking lot was full and there was a line 8 people deep at the pit toilets...yikes!

The hike is an easy 4-mile loop, with a bit added on if you want to visit the Lower Falls. The trail is mainly through a flat valley, so it's a unique opportunity and welcome change to other hiking in the area, much of which is densely wooded.