Blue Ridge Parkway 2017

After successfully finishing our Central American trip and spending the winter working hard, we were now planning a next major adventure, Alaska; in the meantime, we had a week off, so we decided to first go on a warm-up mini trip: a short ride (2000-mile round trip) along the Blue Ridge Parkway and Tennessee.

The Blue Ridge Parkway is the 470-mile gorgeous mountain road (actually built to be a scenic drive) that runs from Shenandoah National Park in Virginia to Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina.

We did 315 miles on day one, and spent the night in Charlottesville with our host Lauren (we camped behind the house she lived in), who also sang with her band that night. From there, we entered the Parkway.

In Virginia, the Parkway is all about the lovely views of sunlit hills, golden meadows and old farmhouses.

Not far from the road is a small hillbilly town of Floyd, which is not to be missed: its Friday night Jamboree is a gem of authentic old folk music. The whole town, young and old, gathers in the Floyd Country Store, where they listen to bluegrass gospel and then dance to the traditional Appalachian bluegrass music; you can join, and you can buy overalls or opossum pate, but there is no drinking or smoking.

Next, the road took us into North Carolina High Country:

The mountains in this part of the Parkway grow higher and more rugged (the tallest peak is Mount Mitchell at 6,684 feet/2037m). In words of a 1752 settler: "We saw mountains to the right, to the left, before and behind us, rising like great waves in a storm." At the end, the roads are the very twisty and the views are supposed to be the most breathtaking - but unfortunately, the rains came, and all we saw was fog (or "smoke" - you could tell we were nearing the famous Smoky Mountains)...

After the surprisingly cosmopolitan/hipster mountain town of Asheville, the Parkway ends in the town of Cherokee, a rundown and deeply religious ancestral home of the Eastern Cherokee Nation, where we wild-camped by the river, accompanied by rain and lots of geese.

Then we entered Tennessee, where we planned on visiting two of the greats of Americana: Jack Daniel's Distillery and Nashville.

The torrential rains on the Tennessee border made us wear our trusty trash bags (pretty much the best waterproof jacket on the market) and eat lunch standing under the roof by the side of the road.

We made it to the Jack Daniels Distillery, and took the factory tour completely wet, water dripping behind us as we walked around.

Every shot of Jack is made in the tiny (otherwise alcohol-free) town of Lynchburg. The distillery is old and surprisingly pretty, the guides knowledgeable and interesting, you can buy and taste all kinds of their whiskey (and buy a $10,000 barrel), and Jack Daniel turned out to be a fun guy: he was very small, very feisty and short-tempered, and he loved it all: women, parties, music, and travelling (by the way, he died of complications with his foot because he angrily kicked a safe in his office. That office is still there, exactly as it was.); so even though we were wet and frozen, we really enjoyed the tour.

Stina has always wanted to see the 'Music City USA', the center of the old country music, where the big stars like Patsy Cline, Dolly Parton and Johnny Cash were trying to make it, playing in Nashville's many honky-tonks and in the famous Grand Ole Opry.

We of course spent the first evening listening to performers in the Grand Ole Opry: it remains fairly cheap, true to its spirit of celebrating good music, and even the biggest stars proudly still line up on the stage almost daily to sing a few songs - Carrie Underwood was performing the night we were there.

The town of Nashville is small and pretty and pleasant, and full of music.

After checking out the Broadway street (packed with honky-tonk bars; by the way, honky-tonk means a cheap or disreputable bar, club, or dance hall), we visited the awesome Country Music Hall of Fame Museum, which explores and explains the development of country music and exhibits all kinds of fun stuff, like the oldest black country music recordings, Elvis Presley's actual blue suede shoes and his car that was painted with crushed diamonds and golden dust (plus, there is a TV in the back!) and Johnny Cash's guitar.

We spent the evening in the American Legion (a dusty, authentic old club for veterans) where Jack White likes to come and dance the night away to live country music with local girls. The next morning we checked out Third Man Records, Jack White's absolute hipster record store, and ate the only thing you absolutely must when in Nashville, hot chicken (chicken fried in hot sauce - and the best place for it is Prince's Hot Chicken Shack, an awesome rundown black diner on the edge of town).

That was it, then we went home and continued preparing for Alaska - this was a short, but awesome trip, with lots of pretty nature, and definitely something we recommend you do if you like all things Americana!