From the Blue Ridge Parkway we headed to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. This was the most scenic part of the trip and a fun ride up to and down from the peak at Clingmans Dome.
Chad on the Appalachian Trail
For more information on the Smoky Mountains click on this link; http://www.nps.gov/grsm/
The Blue Ridge Parkway is 469 miles long. It goes from Shenandoah National Park in Virgina to The Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina. However it is attached to another 105 miles of Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park making this road, in essence, 574 miles long. We rode a good 400 miles on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Maybe even 450 miles. The road goes through small farms, grassy fields, on the ridges and sometimes through the Appalachian Mountains.
It was very hot during the ride. The temperature reached 105 in parts of Virgina and high 90's everywhere we were riding. But because the road is 2,000 - 6,000 feet high on the mountains it was 10 - 20 degrees cooler where we were. The Parkway crosses the Eastern Continental Divide. Some of you may recall that I crossed The Continental Divide on my trip out west in 2008. See "American Journey 2008" on the left side of this page for pictures and blogs of that trip.
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