Apr 3 - Blue Ridge Mountain Parkway, NC

  We spent the day traveling along a 20 mile portion of the Blue Ridge Mountain Parkway, and visiting Grandfather Mountain Park.  I thought the Great Smokey Mountain parkway was amazing.  This section of the Blue Ridge Mountain Parkway was breathtaking.  There were pull over Overlooks, almost at every turn, so there were a lot of them, and we stopped at all of them.  They look out mostly on one side, but sometimes along both sides of the road.  They also have many trails heads leading from the overlooks and pull overs.  You are up so high, that the view over the many mountains is incredible.  There is a State Park with a lake, along the way, where we stopped for awhile.
  Then we went to Grandfather Mountain Park.  This is a non-profit park, that has picnic areas with trails, a museum, some wildlife exhibits of rescued animals, and a 2 mile uphill, winding road almost to the top of Grandfather Mountain, which is about 6,000 ft high.  It turns out that this is the mountain road that Forrest Gump ran, when he ran across country.  And the  self-guided audio tour tells about when Tom Hanks and his brother, who was his running double, were at the park.
  I drove up to the top--in the car, of course, no RV's are allowed, which was a bit nerve-wracking, but I am getting used to mountain travel.  At the top, the view was almost 360 degrees.  Then, you can climb the steps to the mile-high bridge that crosses over a chasm to the Grandfather Mountain peak.  The bridge itself is only 80 feet above the gorge, and it is a swinging bridge.  Peter was terrified, but we started across.  The wind was extremely strong, it was really cold, and the bridge was swinging, although it had hand rails.  After a few steps, we both decided the view was pretty much the same on this side of the crevasse as on the other.  So we decided to pass up that once-in-a-lifetime experience.  If I had had any encouragement (if any of the kids had been with me), I probably would have gone over, but. . .
  I was a really neat day.

Blue Ridge Mountain parkway overlook photos:

State Park lake:

Grandfather Mountain top: