The Blue Ridge the Long Way

This route runs south to north across the North Carolina high country, from the Highlands plateau to the crest villages above the Piedmont, using US 64 and the Blue Ridge Parkway for most of the miles. It wants three nights and the first two weeks of October, when the color starts at the top of the mountains and works down, so you drive with the peak the whole way. Book every room before you leave home, since the leaf weeks fill the mountains months out.

Arrive by the switchbacks on US 64 from the west, which climbs past a string of roadside waterfalls, one of which the road famously passes behind. Spend the night above four thousand feet, where dinner requires a jacket and the morning requires a fire. Walk Main Street after the day trippers leave and you will see why the same Southern families have kept houses here for a hundred years.

Drop off the plateau and follow US 64 east into the town at the mouth of Pisgah National Forest. Give the forest a half day, the roadside falls and the swimming rock are both just up the highway, then take a coffee downtown and watch for the white squirrels, which the town treats as citizens. It is a short detour that thinks it is a destination, and by late afternoon it is right.

Come into the city for the night and use it as a city, a proper dinner, a late walk, a bookstore. The regulars treat Asheville as the supply stop of the high country, and one night is the correct dose on this route. Get onto the Parkway north of town early the next morning, before the overlooks fill.

The Parkway between Asheville and Blowing Rock is the finest sustained stretch of the whole road, riding the crest past Mount Mitchell and Grandfather Mountain, and in the first week of October it is the best drive in the South. Allow the full day for what the map calls three hours. End in the village on the edge of the escarpment, where the rock the town is named for hangs over a thousand feet of air, and take the last light from the overlook with everyone else who timed it right. Dinner in the village, an early night, and the long view one more time before the drive home.