Blue Ridge Parkway (Virginia)
National Parkway Administered By The National Park Service; A National Scenic Byway And All American Road · Bedford, Virginia
Four hundred and sixty-nine miles of road built along the crest of the Appalachians with no purpose except to be driven slowly, and two hundred and seventeen of those miles are in Virginia. It begins at Rockfish Gap, exactly where Skyline Drive ends at the southern boundary of Shenandoah National Park, and runs south-west along the ridgeline to the North Carolina line and on to the Great Smokies. There are no lorries, no billboards, no traffic lights and no commercial frontage of any kind - the speed limit is forty-five and most of the point is that you go slower than that. Construction began in 1935 as Depression relief work and took over fifty years to finish, and the engineering is deliberately invisible: the road is laid to follow the land rather than cut through it, with stone-faced bridges and tunnels that were built to look older than they are. The Virginia half carries Humpback Rocks, the James River crossing at the lowest point on the whole Parkway, the Peaks of Otter, Roanoke, Mabry Mill and the Blue Ridge Music Center, and for a fortnight each October it is one of the great drives on the continent.
Rockfish Gap to the North Carolina line, Bedford, Virginia, 24523, United States
Open 24 hours a day, year round, and FREE - there is no entrance fee anywhere on the Blue Ridge Parkway. BUT SECTIONS CLOSE without much notice for ice, snow, rockslide and construction, and winter closures can last weeks; check the National Park Service real-time closure map before setting out. Visitor centres, campgrounds, restaurants and the Peaks of Otter Lodge are SEASONAL, mainly May to October. There is no fuel anywhere on the Parkway.
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