Cycling the Blue Ridge Parkway: Brevard, NC to Roanoke, VA

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After our time spent riding the coastal plains from Florida through Georgia and South Carolina, arriving in North Carolina and the Blue Ridge Parkway, in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains felt really good, like we had arrived back in our preferred habitat. Brevard turned out to be the little haven of all things mountain biking and outdoor adventure that we had hoped it would be, and we made good use of the few days we had there.

However, as has often been the case on this trip (especially since arriving Stateside) we felt a little restricted in our day-off options. Sometimes it’s difficult to really get the most out of a place without a car and we end up choosing the less-strenuous options rather than the real highlights. When you are already pretty tired from riding to get there, and you also don’t want to overdo it as you need to rest at least a little before hitting the road again what you do on the days off is a big consideration. This is why staying with locals is so good.

From our host Tara, her awesome family and the local bike shop folks we learned of a bunch of cool places to explore while we were in town, a mountain bike loop around Dupont state forest was top of our priority list. It was a little way from Brevard but without any luggage on the bikes it wasn’t too taxing of a ride and when we found the trails in the woods out there it was totally worth the big day out. 100% sweet singletrack without any horrible climbs, but with a ton of flowy and super fun descents. Somebody really put some thought into the trail network over there, and we only just scratched the surface. After just one ride we already knew Brevard was somewhere we could spent a lot of time, but preferably with proper mountain bikes, to make the most of the huge trail network in both Dupont and Pisgah forests. We’ll go back one day.

One of Tara’s friends invited us to go and do a hike around some waterfalls in the private community where she lived, just outside of town. As it’s a private trail network we were the only people enjoying the stunning nature and amazing waterfalls that day. It made a nice change of pace from riding bikes! The area itself reminded us a lot of San Carlos in Colombia, full of crystal clear streams and thundering waterfalls. We also got to swim in the river, which is always a highlight of any hike.

We ended up staying with Tara a day longer than planned so we could attend the start of Brevard’s “White Squirrel Festival”, known to some (well, mainly just Tara’s daughter!) as “the Coachella of Brevard”. It coincided with Memorial Day weekend and Friday night saw the town center closed to vehicles, and food trucks and market stalls lined the streets leading up to a music stage where a selection of local bands performed. It was a really cool atmosphere and a great final evening to our time in town. The festival actually went on all weekend but we had made plans to stay with someone in Asheville, and we wanted to explore the Pisgah National Forest a little on our way over there. 

The great thing about the national forests in the USA is that (for the most part) you can camp in them for free, legally. And even better than that some of them actually have ‘dispersed’ camp sites which provide a flat tent pad and a fire ring/grill, normally in a beautiful part of the forest. We took an extended route from Brevard to Asheville and we wound our way through the forest, spending the night at just such a campsite. It was a really peaceful place, next to a small river for another swim, though this time the water was freezing! Ben got a fire going and we spent the evening relaxing and chatting with passing hikers, mountain bikers and horse riders who were making the most of their Memorial Day weekend.

Setting up camp in the forests around here does take a little more effort though, mostly due to the presence of those super cuddly looking black bears. Spring is also the season when they are most active and with cubs so caution has to taken in regards to food at campsites. They can smell food from miles away so you have to make sure that you don’t eat in or near your tent, and you hang any food you have left in a tree overnight. The bears aren’t interested in humans, only food, so as long all of your tasty things are inaccessible (and well away from your deeply sleeping selves) it’s all good.

Brevard hadn’t been on our radar until Scott in Savannah had really sung its praises, but Asheville had already caught our attention with its ‘Beer town of the USA’ award, so when Kirk offered to host us there for a few days we jumped at the chance. We couldn’t have asked for a better host, another example of the awesome Couchsurfing community. Staying with him was made even more fun by his two lovable pugs called Nigel and Tobin. It’s safe to say we all became good friends very quickly. As it was Memorial Day weekend Kirk invited us to join him for his own little tradition of smoking a beef brisket for dinner. After 10 hours in the smoker and served up with some traditional Southern collard greens it was a real treat.

Asheville is a very cool town. With its trendy microbrewery and craft beer culture, a whole bunch of great restaurants, the Biltmore House* and a beautiful setting nestled in the Appalachians it was another easy town to love. Kirk gave us some great recommendations and took us to some cool places to see, eat food and sample some of the many craft beers that Asheville has garnered a reputation for, so we spent our days there really relaxing and spoiling ourselves with food and beer. It was just about a perfect few days of down time. 

*The Biltmore house and estate look pretty incredible, google it. But, at $60-$85 for entry and a tour it was way out of our budget for this trip.

Leaving Asheville meant we would finally encounter the title character of this blog entry, The Blue Ridge Parkway. Dubbed “America’s Favourite Drive” it’s a very popular route with holiday makers, especially motorbikers and folks in RVs or with caravans (or ‘Travel Trailers’, if you’re American). As the name suggests the BRP sticks to the highest ridge in this region of the Appalachian mountains and for its entire 429 mile (690km) length you get stunning views over the North Carolina and Virginia surroundings.

We joined the BRP at one of it’s most mountainous sections, immediately climbing out of the valley that Asheville sits in and gaining 960m (3150ft) over the course of a days ride. To make things harder for ourselves we chose to climb just a little higher up to the top of Mount Mitchell, the highest point east of the Mississippi River, another 440m (1443ft) higher still. By the end of that day we were spent. Handily there is a campground up there so we could set up camp and enjoy the sunset with a handful of others that had had the same idea.

The next few days all looked fairly similar, following the BRP and drinking in the incredible landscapes whenever the road wasn’t entirely surrounded by native woodland. We could definitely see why so many people choose to come here, but doing it by car seemed to us like you would miss out on a lot; the forest sounds of the birds and the animals and the smells, like the wild strawberries that sometimes line the road. The road was generally quiet too, and what traffic there was normally gave us plenty of space when passing. That’s not to say the ride was easy though. The road is never flat. While the gradients aren’t overly severe you constantly undulate between short uphills and short downhills, gaining and losing the same couple of hundred metres in elevation the whole time.

Predominantly we camped along this section of the Parkway. There are some designated campgrounds but for cyclists they are often a little too far for a day’s ride, so we ended up camping for free in the forest, and also at a private campground/RV park for one night. This was a first for us as in the UK ‘campground’ means tents, but here private campgrounds cater for RVs as much (if not more) than they do for tents, so we spent the night surrounded by folks in their several hundred thousand dollar rigs with AC and satellite TV. We were only slightly envious, especially when it started raining and we had to dive into the tent! But the one thing that RVers miss out on is local hospitality and along the way we also managed to organise staying with a couple of Warmshowers hosts. 

Sam gave us a place to stay in Boone, NC and we chatted all things bike related as he was imminently about to head out to ride the Great Divide route. Him and his housemates were our kind of people and we walked through the door into a lounge filled with a collection of snowboards, mountain bikes and parts and a whole range of climbing equipment, we even ended up sleeping underneath their home-made climbing wall that they had built in their garage!

After several days of camping we found ourselves staying with Jeff and Patricia in their own secluded paradise, and house that Jeff built himself, just off the Parkway. Jeff was a keen cyclist and had undertaken some long tours in the past, it was great to share stories from the road. They also showed us an incredible light show put on every evening by the lightning bugs/fireflies that live in the trees surrounding the house. Like endless tiny fireworks, it was mesmerising (but sadly not really visible in photos or videos, without more sophisticated equipment than we have!). 

As you head north on the Parkway, the section between Boone and Roanoke, the undulations become less severe, you leave the Pisgah National Forest and the scenery opens up a bit more into rolling farmlands. The elevation is a lot lower so the views aren’t quite as spectacular but it was a nice change from being consistently enveloped in the thick forest. Roanoke, VA was to be our next stopping point for a couple of days off and after 8 days of riding since Asheville we were ready for it too. In a yet another testament to the amazing Warmshowers and Couchsurfing networks we had a great couple of hosts agree to take us in and allow us to rest, do laundry (necessary by this point), and plan our next steps. More about that next time. 

Pedal with a purpose,

Ben and Steph

8 Responses

  1. Stephen
    | Reply

    Wow. What an amazing section of road! At this point, I haven’t elected to ride along the BRP. I’ve chosen a route a bit further to the east. Still, that’s the great part of making a plan – it can be modified or dumped altogether!

    • unscriptedride
      | Reply

      Yeah for sure, I’d definitely recommend to anyone riding on the east coast to consider the BRP, we think it’s much nicer here in the mountains than the flat, hot and busy coastline (but depends on how much you like climbing hills!) We want to come back and ride the mountain bike routes through this area. There’s so many gravel roads and singletrack you can use to traverse the Appalachian mountains without even setting tyre on the Blue Ridge. It’s so cool! But yeah, even with our sadly impending time limit we’ve managed to alter plans and seen some excellent places that locals have recommended.

  2. Stephen
    | Reply

    Always an issue with time. Are you on the 90 day WVP, or a B2 visa?

    • unscriptedride
      | Reply

      Just the 90 day ESTA because we knew we had to be back in the UK by the end of August so we wouldn’t make full use of the B2 this time round, so decided to save the money. Next time!

  3. Julie
    | Reply

    Hi again,

    It is great to hear more of your travels through Eastern US. Quite different from the rest of your travels so far – but equally interesting, it seems. It is good that you feel you have managed to still travel cheaply, even in a country with a relatively high cost of living. The wild camps sound great, especially now you have got the hand of bear avoidance! I bet the first few nights under canvas in bear country were a bit worrisome but you’ll no doubt have the food stashing down to a fine art now. The fireflies sound great – I remember lying in a hammock with Solana in Costa Rica, watching fireflies together, a special and enduring moment…

    Solana has done her phonics screening this week. She didn’t see it as a test at all, which is good. Sounds like she found it OK – but I guess we’ll see when she gets her school report! We are going camping for the weekend in a couple of weeks – it will be Isabella’s first camping trip & she is looking forward to it I think. It will be interesting to see how she sleeps under canvas – fingers crossed she enjoys the experience. In the Summer we plan to go to the Isle of Wight for a week – that is about as far as we’ll get this year. Hopefully we’ll actually make it out of the UK with the girls next year….

    Why do you need to be back in UK by the end of August? Will that be you back for the foreseeable future, or just a temporary return from your travels? Either way, it would be great to see you both and hear more about your travels. We will really miss your blog – it has been great travelling vicariously with you, particularly at this time when we are unusually tied to the UK with our new addition (for whom we are not easily able to get a passport yet, until the legal adoption process is completed!).

    Hasta luego,
    J, L, S & I x

    • unscriptedride
      | Reply

      Hey guys! It’s cool you’re off camping soon, fingers crossed she likes it too. The Isle of Wight is nice as well.
      So we have to be back for three of our friends’ weddings starting from the August bank holiday for the next few weeks in September. It’ll be nice to be back for such a big occasion and then we’re going to work for a few months while we save some money and then head off again in the spring. It’s not over don’t worry and we’ll keep blogging! We must get your mobile number so we can get in touch when we’re back and meet up, that would be really cool!xx

  4. Patty Kreiselman
    | Reply

    Our serendipitous rendezvous at the top of Mt. Mitchell was such a treat! As soon as we left the mountain, I said to Rick, we should have taken a picture of the ‘Sunset Party’! It was a great little happy group enjoying a special view, and sharing stories! We’re enjoying your travels, and so glad we could be connected through this Blog. Happy Trails to you!

    • unscriptedride
      | Reply

      Hi Patty and Rick. Thank you so much for the comment, we hoped that you managed to find the blog okay and I think we have a photo with a few of the ‘sunset party’ in it so we’ll email that to you. It was a lot of fun and thanks again for the ride back down to the campground. Hope you enjoying following the blog and keep riding, Rick!

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