2017 Summer

Rhododendrons grow wild throughout the Appalachian Mountains.

Wildflowers fill the fields in the Appalachian Mountains.

Mabry Mill showcases the ingenious way people a century ago used water pouring across a paddle wheel to power mill saws and grindstones.

Just one of many wineries in the region.

Crabtree Falls is a torrential cascade that crashes down a mountainside, but despite its sound and fury, it wasn’t even known to a visitors center clerk in Virginia who was giving us info us on Virginia’s much more famous Crabtree Falls. Waterfall hikes are usually vertical hikes that head straight up or down alongside the water, and Crabtree Falls in Virginia is so tall and has so many sections to it that the trail builders have installed a variety of staircases on the trail. It is the tallest waterfall in the east, and the hike to the top was a great stair-stepping workout that was rewarded with continuously changing views of the falls all the way up. Our hike to Apple Orchard Falls was particularly meaningful because the very steep trail down to the falls crosses the 2,200-mile-long Appalachian Trail that goes from Georgia to Maine. Just as we approached the signs at the junction of these two trails, a “though-hiker” on the Appalachian Trail approached. We stopped to chat with him and discovered he was six weeks and 770 miles into his trek. Sporting a surprisingly small backpack for a four-month journey, he said he was still using the same pair of hiking boots he’d started in and was really looking forward to seeing Mt. Katahdin in Maine.

Our drive north through Virginia passed endless rural farms withwhite silos and red farmhouses onwonderfully rolling green terrain. These picturesque farms set against a backdrop of verdant hills seemed like classic images of America in a bygone era. The agrarian roots of our culture can still be found in the Appalachians, however. At Mabry Mill on the Blue Ridge Parkway we learned how a grist mill turned the energy of flowing water into power to operate tools and machinery back in the early 1900s. A sprightly old fellow inside Mabry Mill showed us how a long wooden lever started and stopped the flow of water going from a flume outside to the big paddle wheel. As the water flowed over the paddle wheel, huge gears inside the mill would turn. These gears turned other gears to power everything from a big mill saw to a huge millstone that ground wheat into flour. Watching this ingenious contraption at work gave us a deep respect for our forebears who planted and harvested their wheat and corn, carried it to the local grist mill to be ground into flour, and then brought it home to bake bread and cakes and muffins. How incredibly easy we have it today. When we finally reached Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park at the north end of this Appalachian mountain route, we were fascinated to learn that it was the first

APPALACHIAN MOUNTAIN

COAST TO COAST SUMMER MAGAZINE 2017

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