Blue Ridge Parkway, Take 1

It rained in great torrents and the wind howled for most of the night and when we woke up this morning, it was only 26 degrees. Not wanting to sit around for another day without responsibilities, we decided to go north, drive some of the Blue Ridge Parkway and look for a couple of waterfalls with trails more befitting our age and general physical condition. The driving directions seamed fairly straightforward so armed with not one but two different maps, we left shortly after breakfast.

In a perfect world we would have driven to Little Switzerland, filled our gas tank, found and hiked to Linville Falls and Dugger’s Creek Falls, made our way back to Marion and had a nice lunch.  But not today. Today, we spent four hours on a fool’s errand and a cold one at that. Having snowed at higher elevations last night, the steep twisted road climbing ever higher had been salted to keep all vehicles safe. We never found Little Switzerland, I suspect because everything was closed or because we were not on the correct road. We took several wrong turns, got rerouted by Google Maps on my phone and ended up finding a Wal-Mart out in the middle of, literally, no where. Who knew?

After a couple of detours, we finally found the entrance to the Blue Ridge Parkway in the small village of Linville Falls only to discover the Parkway was closed in both directions due to snow and ice on the road. We were within a mile of the trail head

but I just didn’t have it in me after all the hassle. A quick stop at Linville Caverns was made for a few photos of the North Branch River. And I found this vine covered tree to be especially interesting.