Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018 - 8

FROM THE EDITOR

BEST OF THE MOUNTAINS:

Walking on
Sunshine
As our readers weigh in with their
picks in many categories, here are
five personal picks for the great walks
in the mountains.
BY KURT RHEINHEIMER
You get lucky enough to work on this
magazine for 30 years, you also get
a big incentive to get outside into
these mountains. Over those years,
Gail and I have made forays, from
our home here in Roanoke, Virginia, to mountain places small and
large, from Helvetia, West Virginia
and Sneedville, Tennesee, for small
examples, to "big cities" like Asheville, North Carolina and Knoxville, Tennessee.
And of course all manner of
places in between, including, last
summer, Franklin, North Carolina,
where part of our family was among
the throng that overwhelmed that
little town as the total eclipse turned
it dark for a few minutes, to the
erupting cheeers of people all over
downtown and its surroundings.
The most constant and most rewarding aspects of our 30 years of
"best of the mountains" have taken
place on foot.
Here, in no particular order, are
10 memorable walks worth doing
again:
8 BlueRidgeCountry.com

* Roanoke River Greenway from
our house to downtown Roanoke,
Virginia, and back. The rewards of
this walk include not just the riverside stroll amid what in the warm
months becomes hundreds of walkers, runners and bikers, but the wonderful restaurant offerings of downtown. You build in a meal to your 6
miles round-trip and you've built a
very nice experience.
* Asheville, North Carolina's
downtown. We've never built a
particular route or sequence in our
many visits, but the gotta-includes
are Lexington Avenue (great shops),
the Pack Square-to-(and including)
the Grove Arcade, down Biltmore
Avenue at least to the Orange Peel,
and, though not quite as scenic,
down Clingman Avenue to the Grey
Eagle, where we've seen the estimable Fred Eaglesmith several times.
* In the Mount Pleasant National
Scenic Area of Virginia, the Old Hotel-Appalchian Trail walk over Cold
Mountain, a 5.7-mile loop that offers
great blackberry spots in the summer, a shelter along a stream not far
from the midpoint and the mile-long
4,000-foot bald of Cold Mountain,
with wide open 360-degree views.
* West Virginia's Dolly Sods plateau. We've most often gone up
via the Red Creek Trail, which is
a rugged delight in its own right.

Virginia's Cold
Mountain is
a timelessly
great walk, as
witnessed by
Editor Kurt
Rheinheimer
upon its bald
around the time
of the magazine's
2oth anniversary.

And after that climb, you're on the
highest plateau in the East (at up to
4,700 feet), amid wonders including
squishy bogs, fields full of blueberries, heath barrens and more. The
loss, to logging around 1900, of the
mammoth spruce and eastern hemlock forest, and subsequent use of
the plateau for military purposes was
mitigated by protection efforts in the
1970s, resulting in interlocking sets
of trails full of discovery.
* The Georgia Appalachian Trail
north from Woody Gap to Neels
Gap and the Mountain Crossings
store. Any walk on the A.T. when
your destination is a little piece
of civilization-in-the-woods is a
treat. (Other favorites include the
walks to Skyland and Big Meadows in Shenandoah National Park,
into Damascus, Virginia and Hot
Springs, North Carolina.) On this
Georgia walk, you get to cross the
state's highest peak and then walk
through Mountain Crossings. To
come out of the forest into such a
bounty of goodies in all realms of
hiking is just plain lots of fun.
As are all of these, and as are
hundreds of others throughout the
mountains. Our goal over recent
years has been to combine a stretch
of forest or greenway with a nice restaurant stop. You get your steps in,
and you get a date! 

http://www.BlueRidgeCountry.com

Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Blue Ridge Country - May/June 2018