Blue Ridge Parkway: Doughton Park to Mount Mitchell

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Doughton Park

   Doughton Park is a high, open stretch of the Blue Ridge Parkway where the forest gives way to long grassy balds and the whole of the North Carolina Piedmont seems to lie below you. It is the biggest recreation area on the northern half of the Parkway, with an altitude of roughly 1,000 to 1,200 metres, and it is named for Robert Doughton, a congressman from the area known as Muley Bob, who helped push the Parkway through Congress in the 1930s. The Parkway itself, built between 1935 and 1987, is the longest linear park in the United States, a ribbon of road that follows the crest of the southern Appalachians for nearly 470 miles.

   Read the complete Doughton Park write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Doughton Park is where the day begins. Next is Linn Cove Viaduct.

2. 2. Linn Cove Viaduct

   The Linn Cove Viaduct is the last piece of the Blue Ridge Parkway to be finished, and probably the most ingenious. For decades, the Parkway had a gap on the side of Grandfather Mountain, because the owner of the land refused to allow a conventional road to scar the slope. The solution, completed in 1983, was a curving concrete bridge, about 380 metres long, that twists along the mountainside on slender piers, and was built from the top down, so that no heavy machinery had to touch the forest below. Its 153 precast segments, each slightly different, were lifted into place one by one. When it opened, the whole Parkway, begun in the 1930s, was finally complete, in 1987, after more than fifty years.

   Read the complete Linn Cove Viaduct write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Linn Cove Viaduct comes up about 84 km into the recorded legs. Next is Mount Mitchell.

3. 3. Mount Mitchell

   Mount Mitchell has a simple claim to fame: at 2,037 metres, or 6,684 feet, it is the highest point in the United States east of the Mississippi River. It stands in the Black Mountains of western North Carolina, part of the southern Appalachians, and a spur road climbs to the summit from the Blue Ridge Parkway at around milepost 355. The last stretch of the road ends at a car park a short walk below the summit, where an observation platform gives views across rows of blue ridges.

   Read the complete Mount Mitchell write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   The route ends here after 250 km.