Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.
John Muir, Our National Parks, 1901.
Designer Stanley Abbott envisioned a roadway that “lay easy on the land,” a route devoid of commercial traffic carrying motorists along six mountain ranges of the Appalachian chain, dropping into gaps and gracefully regaining the top of the Blue Ridge. Pull-offs link with more than 100 walking and hiking trails, from half-mile leg-stretchers, to the great Georgia-to-Maine Appalachian Trail. The scene through the car window ranges from rolling pastures dotted with grazing cattle to dramatic granite domes.
One of the three Peaks of Otter, Sharp Top (milepost 83) was long revered as the state’s highest peak at 3,875 feet. Its stone was used in DC’s Washington Monument, which is inscribed: “From Otter’s summit, Virginia’s loftiest peak. To crown a monument to Virginia’s noblest son.”
When geologists later measured Mount Rogers in southwest Virginia, they declared that 5,729-foot peak tallest. But mere numbers do little to diminish inspiring views from atop Sharp Top (unrivaled even by Mount Rogers’, whose summit is tree-covered). A short, lung-busting climb ends at panoramic views of the surrounding peaks and valleys. Far below, dense forest is interrupted only by the Peaks of Otter Lodge on tranquil Abbott Lake, named for the Parkway’s designer.
Sharp Top is a monument in itself, memorializing the sweat and talent of immigrant stoneworkers who fashioned elaborate steps to its peak. Out-of-work masons were given the task during the Depression. Their beautiful arched bridges, tunnels, retaining walls and paths, all using native stone, can be seen throughout the park.
Many other Parkway hikes are “top-down.” Rock Castle Gorge (milepost 167) epitomizes this, beginning along the parkway in quiet pastures and dropping into the deep, quiet world of an Appalachian cove forest. You can spend the night in one of the primitive campsites alongside Rock Castle Creek, a stream that powered six sawmills around 1910, when upwards of seventy families lived in this “holler.”
Grazing cattle are still a common sight along the Parkway, with pastures leased out to approximately 500 families. There’s intentionally a sense of “no boundaries” to the park, with farmland instead of fences at the Parkway’s outskirts.
THE HIKES
27. Rock Castle Gorge
28. St. Mary’s Wilderness
29. Three Ridges
30. Mount Pleasant
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Z. Torry Ridge-Mill Creek Loop
AA. Humpback Rocks
BB. Crabtree Falls
CC. Whetstone Ridge
DD. Apple Orchard Falls–Cornelius Creek Loop Trail