One of the many blessings of growing in Laurel Springs, NC was the long Sunday drives my family always took North or South on the Blue Ridge Parkway. My father is 75 years old and recalls the days when the Parkway to be the only paved road in this part of the mountains. Whether easing through a foot of snow or driving in and out of clouds of heavy fog, the Blue Ridge Parkway is always a stunning reminder of the beauty around us here in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Meadows of Doughton Park! Beautiful place to fly kites! Visiting the Blue Ridge Parkway is for the adventurer of any age. We travel with our parents, hike the boulder and waterfall trails with our ten year old twin boys and chase or 2 year old little girl across the meadows at Doughton Park where we often fly kites in the spring and summer.
Go for adventure with your family this year! Come up the mountain and enjoy one of my favorite National Parks, you may just decide to stay!
“The Blue Ridge Parkway is many things. It is the longest road planned as a single unit in the United States. It is an elongated park, protecting significant mountain landscapes far beyond the shoulders of the road itself. It is a series of parks providing the visitor access to high mountain passes, splendid natural “gardens” of flowering mountain plants, waterfalls and water gaps, deep forests and upland meadows. It is a continuous series of panoramic views, the boundaries of its limited right-of-way rarely apparent and miles of the adjacent countryside seemingly a part of the protected scene. It is a “museum of the managed American countryside,” preserving the rough-hewn log cabin of the mountain pioneer, the summer home of a textile magnate, and traces of early industries, such as logging railways and an old canal. It is miles of split-rail fence, moss on a wood shingle roof, broomcorn and flax in a pioneer garden. It is the fleeting glimpse of a deer, a wild turkey or a red fox, or for those who prefer their animal life less wild, herds of cows grazing in pastures or horses trotting in fields. It is a chain of recreational areas, offering motorists a spot to picnic in the woods, a place to sleep overnight in a campground or a charming lodge, as well as opportunities to refuel their vehicle, enjoy a meal, or purchase a piece of fine regional handiwork. It is the product of a series of major public works projects that helped the Appalachian region climb out the depths of the Great Depression. The Blue Ridge Parkway is all these things and much more, therefore it should come as no surprise that this is the most heavily visited unit of the National Park Service.” - http://blueridgeparkway75.org/more-than-a-road/history
