Tom Branch Waterfall in the Deep Creek portion of Great Smoky Mountains National Park falls in a narrow spray down to the river below.
The New River Trail in Galax, Virginia, offers 57 miles of flat and easy cycling on a scenic rails-to-trails route.
The park has built a viewing platform just an arm’s reach from the waterfall, and a bench opposite the waterfall is ideal for watching the water plummet from high above. We enjoyed a picnic lunch in this wonderfully tranquil setting. A little further down the trail, the Tom Branch Waterfall fell in a tall thin stream and a pair of tubers floated by us on the river. Indian Creek Falls was a wider expanse of falling sprays, but it was the many fragrant and delicate mountain laurel flowers in the blossoming trees near these falls that really caught our eye. Cherokee is also the southern terminus of the Blue Ridge Parkway, and on another day we drove north along this unique highway. Often shrouded in a canopy of trees and rolling up and down through sweeping turns, this famous parkway provides a wonderful escape into nature, although the views at many of the overlooks are obscured by tall trees. It is favored by motorcycles, because it is such a fun road, but RVs can drive on it too, as long as they skip the southernmost few miles where there are two low tunnels at mileposts 458.8 and 459.3. We opted to drive our rig on other roads nearby to travel from south to north instead, and we hopped on and off the Blue Ridge Parkway in our truck to see some of
the highlights as we made our way north. Just over the Virginia border, we stopped in at the Blue Ridge Music Center, an unusual National Park Service destination with a fabulous museum dedicated to the history and sound of Bluegrass music. They also offer an array of concerts. Bigger concerts are held on the lawn outside the music center at the Music Center Amphitheater, and more intimate daily concerts that are free take place in a breezeway on the edge of the building every afternoon between noon and four. We took a seat in the informal setting of the breezeway and were charmed by the happy melodies filling the room from the guitar and banjo played by Scott Freeman and Willard Gayheart. They talked and joked a little between songs, and their joy in making music together was absolutely infectious. Inside the museum we found lots of fascinating exhibits of musical instruments, soundbites of bluegrass music, and glimpses of the history of this unique genre. Bluegrass has some roots in Africa (the banjo is a modified version of an African musical instrument) and other roots in the British Isles and in German liturgical choir music. When people whose heritages were these vastly different cultures found themselves living side by side in Appalachia in America’s early days, their common
APPALACHIAN MOUNTAIN
COAST TO COAST SUMMER MAGAZINE 2017
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