Across North Carolina - Mount Mitchell, Grandfather Mountain & a Castle

Friday, 28.05. - Maggie Valley to Winston-Salem (North Carolina)

We start before 9.00 am from our hotel and want to first go to Asheville and to the Biltmore Castle and then continue driving north on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

So off to Asheville ("...has it all") and to the Vanderbilts at the Biltmore Castle. With the Vanderbilts, we learn how to get rich: Admission is not $60 but $70!

We limit ourselves to the free film and the bathroom, taking photos in the film that look like we took an aerial tour of the castle.

We leave this great place to see the even greater Asheville - a "Mecca of Art Deco" (quote from the travel guide) and also the birthplace of Thomas Wolfe. We crisscross the city multiple times. With effort, we discover about 3 house gables that look like Art Deco. Not even one photo remains in my camera - that's something... Hoping to still see the "all" that was breathlessly whispered to us as a description, we leave downtown and drive to a famous resort that allegedly dates back to the same era as the Biltmore Castle but costs nothing.

Total nonsense. It's just a hotel box with 500 rooms in a beautiful hillside location above Asheville. After the frustration purchase of a handbag (me) and a golf glove (Gitta), we head to the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Initially, we drive through leafy forest without a view. Then we see glimpses of the hazy hills, which look like piles of broccoli. Not a dramatic landscape, but mystical. We take photos at some lookouts, but the visibility is not clear anywhere.

We stop at Mount Mitchell and look at the surroundings from an altitude of over 2,000 m. An observation point doesn't reveal anything new, but in the small museum, we learn about the highest temperature recorded there, 81°F (27°C), and the lowest, -34°F (-37°C). Initially, we have clouds around us, then the sun comes out - it's mountain climate and probably around 13°C.

We continue driving north on the Blue Ridge Parkway. We reach Little Switzerland around 2.00 pm, we don't see the town, but we are grateful for a small restaurant with home-cooked food and strawberry lemonade.

We continue towards Boone, but we stop at a viewpoint before with a magnificent view.

We continue to the Grandfather Mountain. We have to go through a gate. It is 2.5 miles to the summit, with the Nature Museum in between, where there is an adjacent habitat for three bears, two bald eagles, a mountain lion, and various fallow deer.

At the summit, there is a suspension bridge that now hangs 1 mile above sea level. Beautiful view.

It is Memorial Day Weekend and $125 is the cheapest we will find in the area, so we decide to drive as far as possible towards Winston-Salem.

At Deep Gap, we leave the Blue Ridge Parkway and after almost 10 hours on it, we get back on a highway. We are running low on gas and since there is only one gas station on the Blue Ridge Parkway - but not where we drove 100 miles today - it's a bit tricky. When the gas gauge is almost on empty, we find a gas station - without gas. So we keep going. On the last stretch, we finally find one that sells us gas. Phew.

A deadly thunderstorm breaks loose on us, lightning, thunder, torrential rain. 

We reach the outskirts of Winston-Salem around 9.00 pm in the pitch-black night. The Days Inn is just right for $49,50 including taxes for the room. The search for a movie theater is unsuccessful. At 10.00 pm, we have a beer and return to the hotel. We have "saved" one night from our original travel plan. We actually wanted to be in the mountains today, but it wasn't that great there, and it was more than twice as expensive on this weekend. So let's see where we end up tomorrow.