Mount Mitchell, North Carolina

                      Friday 4/11/2014

The next day we headed back up the mountain on Hwy. 80 to the Blue Ridge Parkway again. As we drove up, we went past Mountain Stream RV Park. It looked like a nice place, so we drove in.

The park is at 1800 ft above sea level and is a very well maintained park.

Most sites sit next to Buck Creek (same creek as the park we are staying at sits next to but 400 ft higher up the mountain). The park would be nice to stay at as the weather gets warmer since it is at a higher elevation. You just have to drive the curvy narrow roads to get to it.

We continued up Hwy. 80, 3 more miles to the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Once on the parkway, we turned the opposite direction that we had gone prior, a couple of days before. Mount Mitchell was 16 miles south on the parkway.

On this route we went through the Twin Tunnels.

We made all the overlook stops. This one was at 4825 ft with a view of Mount Mitchell in the distance.

The drive seemed, and was so much higher than the drive going north from Hwy. 80 on the parkway.

I was starting to get anxious the higher we went, not knowing what the roads were going to be like around each corner.

Beautiful views, but overwhelming at the same time.

Bald Knob 4500 -
 To get to the top you don't always go straight up. Sometimes you have to go back down, then back up.

We reach Black Mountain Gap at 5180 ft.

We didn't bring our sack lunch because our campground owner told us we should have lunch at the restaurant at the top of Mount Mitchell. We were both hungry and then Joe saw the sign that said the Restaurant was open May - October. There goes lunch!

We stopped at the park office and talked to the park rangers and looked around at some of the information on the walls.

We found this sign telling us that Mount Mitchell was 396 ft taller than Mt. Washington. We got a free ride to the top of Mt. Washington on a previous adventure, which was a much scary ride up than Mount Mitchell. You can read about that adventure at http://diane-j-m.blogspot.com/2011/08/mt-washington-auto-road-white-mountains.html

We had 2 more miles to go to reach the summit from the park office.

Awe, another mountain summit to add to our list.

 Mount Mitchell is the highest peak east of the Mississippi and south of Canada.

Joe points to the summit of Mount Mitchell. You can see I-40, that runs between the two large mountains. You can see Asheville also, located between the two large mountains.

Now Joe points to where Marion is, the town where our RV park is located.

On the way down from the summit, we stopped to see the restaurant where we were not going to eat at! Joe bangs at the door, "Open up, we are hungry" Oh well I guess we both need to lose some weight.

We walked around the restaurant to the back patio. This is the view we could have had while eating at the restaurant, or our sack lunch if we had known it was not open.

We could have sat on this patio with our sack lunch, if we had a sack lunch! Can you tell, I was hungry. It was 2:00, and way past my lunch time. I don't do well when I am hungry.

I think the road below is the road we came up on. Joe thinks the road is just some dirt road. What do you think?

As we turned onto the parkway, we looked south to the road closed sign in the other direction. The parkway south of Mount Mitchell to Asheville has been closed since November for road construction. In November, part of the road collapsed. Hope no one had been on it when that happened.

Going downhill has always bothered me more than going up, so I reminded Joe to go slow.

Here are a few picture I took as Joe drove down the mountain.

It always helps me to take pictures to  keep me busy, and mind off the mountain side drop offs.

As we drove down the mountain, we saw signs of Blindkenny.com. The website is where you can go to see pictures of you and your car, as you drive up the mountain.

This is another RV park on Hwy. 80 as we continued down. The park name is Triple C Campground. It looked to have mostly permanent RV's.You can find the phone number on the web, but not much other information.

We drove 53 miles that day, and it took us 2 1/2 hours. When we got back down the mountain, we went to Taco Bell for lunch. I told Joe if he had said to me half way up to Mount Mitchell, he didn't want to go any further, I would have said that is fine with me. I had enjoyed the lower elevation views of the parkway on the previous drive better. The drive didn't seem to bother Joe as much as it did me.

On the way home we stopped at the Tom Johnson Camping Center, which is the third largest RV dealership in the nation. It also has a no frills campground.

We checked out some of the 2014 motor homes. Joe thought they looked to fancy and not homey. For $300,000 to a million, our Nest looks pretty good to us.