The Blue Ridge Parkway to Mount Mitchell Before the Clouds

Mount Mitchell — the highest peak east of the Mississippi at 6,684 feet — sits 35 miles northeast of Asheville via the Blue Ridge Parkway, and the drive there is so beautiful that you'll be tempted to never arrive. The Parkway's speed limit is 45 mph, which feels arbitrary until you round a curve and a valley opens below you in a haze of blue-green ridgelines stacked to the horizon and you realize the speed limit is the park's way of insisting you actually see what you're driving through.

The turnoff to Mount Mitchell State Park is at Milepost 355, and from there a spur road climbs through a spruce-fir forest that belongs to Canada — the trees are balsam fir and Fraser fir, the air is twenty degrees cooler than Asheville, and the smell is Christmas in June. The summit parking lot is a short walk from the observation deck, and on clear mornings the view extends 85 miles in every direction — the Black Mountains, the Great Craggy Mountains, and on exceptional days the haze-wrapped suggestion of the Smokies to the southwest.

The summit often sits in cloud. When this happens, you walk through fog so dense the trees appear and disappear like thoughts you haven't finished having, and the silence is total except for the wind in the fir needles and the occasional winter wren whose song is so complex it sounds like the forest showing off.

Practical notes: The Parkway closes in sections during winter weather. Check conditions before going. Bring layers — the summit can be 30 degrees colder than Asheville. Pack lunch and eat at the Craggy Gardens picnic area on the way back, where the view is possibly better than the summit and you don't have to share it with a parking lot.