Mt Pisgah on the Blue Ridge Parkway

view from the campground

After spending eight glorious days and nights at this idyllic mountain retreat, we returned home jumping back into home updating projects.  The bath is mostly done and it’s time to take a break before returning to kitchen painting.

Waking at 4 AM this morning with blogging on my brain, it is time to take another look at our favorite summer get away.

Introduced to this magical place over 20 years ago, we were drawn here initially for biking and hiking opportunities.  The campground has 5 loops, two RV and three tent, with around 140 sites.  There are no hookups for electric, water or sewer and we never need a reservation….due to the lack of facilities! 

The Mt Pisgah campground is the highest, coolest and most secluded on the 489 mile Blue Ridge Parkway.  At 4, 980 feet, it  provides us with cool breezes and temps that welcome a fire at night.  Mt Pisgah, photo above, is at 5,721 feet with the television tower being the highest east of the Mississippi River.  There are showers in the campground now….years ago we bathed under a sun shower hung in a rhododendron thicket.  The fee is $16 per night, $8 with a senior pass.  The time policy allows camping for 30 consecutive nights, a recent change from a 2 week limit.

The campground is at mile 408 on the parkway, about 15 miles south of Asheville, NC and 61 miles from Cherokee, NC.  It is 5 1/2 hours drive from our home in Chattanooga, 200 miles.  We never hurry as it’s beautiful …traveling through two river gorges and 40 miles on the parkway.

Within walking/hiking distance of the campground, a restaurant, inn and camp store can be accessed.  These photos were taken in early evening from the deck behind the restaurant.

Always love seeing the beautiful flowers found growing along the parkway.  The elevation makes for a much later season.  We find columbine, a very early blooming wildflower, on a hiking trail.  Rhododendron is blooming throughout our campsite.

This wildflower, fly poison, is found along the campground road.

Calla lilies are in the restaurant’s garden.

From the eastern overlooks, Looking Glass Rock, (near Brevard, NC) can be viewed.  There’s a steep hiking trail that climbs to its base.

Sylvester seems to enjoy the trip…or maybe he just likes getting away from his two older sisters!  Lots of entertainment can be found just outside the window.

Sylvester lets us know when it’s bedtime by crawling on top of David’s book, persistently returning every time he’s removed.

A few fiberglass trailers breeze through the campground, most staying only a night.  We are fortunate to make friends with Holly, new Casita owner, and Carrie, proud owner of a pre-owned Scamp.  Will be seeing them again at future rallies!

Too busy talking to get any pictures of their rigs but the campground does have an abundance of small trailers.

This is a cool but pricey little all-aluminum trailer… Camplite.

A 1960 Shasta…no peak inside …still remodeling.

Beautiful homemade teardrop type.

The Retro Lite’s owners are on a multi-month trip….fun people who travel constantly.

The last few days on the parkway are spent hiking…. driving to the Shining Rock area and taking the Ivestor Gap trail.

It is mostly flat, an old roadbed, but the large rocks in the trail prove challenging.  Will take the Art Loeb trail next time!

More of the Same and Blue Mountains

 

What can I say about this summer?  It’s been difficult?  Long? Exhausting? Hot? Not to mention depressing and confusing….

Our downsizing has continued.  Some days we do nothing, other days are full of accomplishments.  The basement is now  mostly organized.  All the boxes have been explored and categorized.  Unused items have found other homes….occasionally in the trash and we have moved on to phase two: painting the kitchen.

“The kitchen paneling and wall paper will look better painted” the realtor said and we both agreed.  The paneling is done and looks great!  Now dreading  painting the wall paper!

Before

After

The confusing and often frustrating part of this project is our ambivalent feelings about selling the house.  Most days it is a “go”, definitely the right thing to do.  But there are also many times it’s a “how in the world are we going to manage in that little duplex without a basement or garage?”  These thoughts mostly arrive in the middle of the night or in odd moments while sitting on the deck looking at the flowers.  And then there’s the cats.  How do we downsize them?

Speaking of the flowers…last year we were in Alaska during the daylily season.  This year I took many pictures as a way of keeping their memories while saying good-bye. 

We received encouragement from a blog post during one of our downtimes.  The Winnie Views post of “How to Eat an Elephant” arrived just at the perfect moment to help me to realize that the plan of updating the house for 3 months, selling the house in 4 months and heading out to AZ by December 1 was causing the stress.  So the plan is now thrown out the window.

The new plan is to keep painting, keep throwing out the stuff we don’t need and take a break from it all!  We headed for the Blue Ridge Parkway and our little bit of heaven at Mt Pisgah Campground.

It is now day 3 here at 5,000 feet and my body, mind and soul are being renewed.  We have done very little but walk and ride the campground and sit, inhaling the cool breezes and peace that flows through the mountains.

We hope the tranquility will last and stay with us once we return to the flat lands.

Time To Go

We are leaving tomorrow.  It's time to return to civilization and the comforts of home.  This has not been our normal, wonderful, fun-filled trip and I can't quite place what went wrong.  We left home traumatized after the septic line backed up and overflowed in our basement the day before we left.  And the cats have been a constant  source of worry for me.  I have been so scared of losing them!  And there was the week of rain along with the week of having no refrigeration.

Last night we met the couple that lost the cat on Sunday.  They live just off the mountain and came up after their work day with hopes of luring Peanut from the woods with food.  Really nice people.  After sharing lost cat stories, we both started crying.  Lost cats, especially lost cats in the woods, really upset me.

And we heard another lost pet story from a Casita owner who was camping down the loop.  She said that a young girl lost her collie a few weeks ago when the dog spooked and ran into the woods.  Her fault according to our Casita friend as she did not have him on a leash.  The rangers did not give either party much hope due to the many coyotes in the area.

We have had a good day.  Ate breakfast at the Pisgah Inn Restaurant and hiked to the upper falls at Graveyard Fields.  Now we are mostly packed and sitting around the first campfire of the trip and I have marshmellows for when the fire dies down!

The next morning.

Ready to leave but will surely miss these wonderful temperatures.  It was 63 in the trailer this morning and 83 degrees yesterday afternoon.  Today promises to be one of those rare clear blue sky days.  I wonder how I will be able to handle the heat of home?

The pictures are of the upper falls, site B23, and the babies.

Sheba and Princess

Life is Good!

After days of storms and rain we have finally had a perfect sunny day!  We are still at Davidson River and currently plugged into one the electric sites.  We got on a waiting list Friday when things looked bleak and I was considering just packing up and going home.  I knew it would give us another option, move back to Mt Pisgah, go home or try an electric site.  Early Saturday afternoon we were informed that a site had become available and did we want it?

With all of my electronic batteries running down, we opted to move and pay for another night.
There is just so much to do here!  Yesterday was spent riding our bikes, moving from one site to another and going out for a late lunch at the Pisgah Fish
Camp and then taking another bike ride.   We discovered a wonderful trail that goes along the Davidson River that takes us all the way into town.

Sunday we attended church services at a tiny stone chapel that is on the edge of the campground.  It is called the English Chapel and I thought, with that name, that it might be an Anglican church or something British.  No, it was named after the first circuit rider preacher whose last name was England. We enjoyed the quaintness and being reminded of our southern roots.

I went to the swimming hole that afternoon and played in the water.  If I had a partner that was willing, I would have rented a tube and gone down the river with all the other tubers.  After the swim we jumped on our bikes and rode to a yogurt store that was almost in Brevard.

We have fished several days.  Even if I don't catch anything, I enjoy standing in the mountain streams and watching the water.  We tried to hike up Looking Glass Rock but it was too many miles cause we did not get started early enough.

We have gone out for dinner, shopped, bought groceries and washed clothes.  Making the most of our forest/city camping before returning to the isolation of the mountain.
 
But as the rain showers have diminished, the heat has increased.  In the low 80's today, time to return to Mt Pisgah!