Mount Mitchell

Happy Anniversary! For our 1 year anniversary, we hopped in the car and started driving north. Smalls wanted to drive part of the Blue Ridge Parkway, so that’s where we went. I love how he has taught me to jump in the car and enjoy the ride trusting that it will all work out. It always does.

We started at the entrance to Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We had an awesome surprise with a large group of elk hanging out. We did learn though that the BRP was closed at that section, so we had to detour and find a way to get on further up.

It was so worth it! The views were absolutely breath taking. It was early April so it was still pretty cool out. There were icicles all over the place. It was so hard not to stop at every overlook. There was another closure that took us on a detour through Asheville which was nice. Refusing to give up, we got back on the BRP and got all the way up to Craggy Gardens and it was closed again. We saw a gravel road to the left and decided to take that instead of turning around. I highly recommend you use the nps.gov website to see current closures. This would have helped us out.

https://www.nps.gov/blri/planyourvisit/roadclosures.htm

Either way, the detour was fun! We ended up north of Mount Mitchell and came back south. The drive was amazing! The road up to Mount Mitchell was pretty too. My dad completed the bike ride up to Mount Mitchell, affectionately called Assault on Mount Mitchell, a few times when he was younger. Driving up that rode definitely gave his patch that I stared at on the back of his riding jersey much more meaningful. He said that many people would not be able to clip out once they got the the top so they would just fall over. It is so steep that you cannot ride down once you go up.

We made it to the top in time for sunset. The temperature was dropping quickly. While we enjoyed the views, a ranger came up to take in the view. He said that the reason many sections of the BRP were closed because they had 2 ft of snow this past week.