For the second year in a row, my wife and I chose to take our vacation the third week in September and to spend that time thousands of feet above our usual location down here in the Coastal Plain. Last year, we began in Shenandoah National Park in Virginia and worked our way down Skyline Drive and the Blue Ridge Parkway to Mount Pisgah, southwest of Asheville. This year, we headed straight to Mount Pisgah and made only short drives from our base as we sought out different hiking trails and landmarks.
Both years, we spent most of our days on hiking trails, working our way up steep slopes and through dense forests. Our rewards for these treks (nine miles or 22,000 steps in one day on three different trails) were majestic views of the mountain-ridge-rumpled horizon or waterfalls or simply the enjoyment of walking deliberately along rock-strewn paths.
This year, cloud and fogs rolled into the southern Appalachian mountains and obscured some of the sights we had wanted to see. The fog, sometimes so thick that I could not see 20 feet in front of me, even made it difficult to get to our destination, the Pisgah Inn on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Once there, the clouds obscured our view of the great vistas the inn's location provided. But the fog did not linger all day, and the sight of the sun peeking through the clouds and shining spotlights on small segments of the landscape made the views even more appealing.
During our resting moments, I managed to read two novels. But even in the mountains, with spotty cellular service and very limited Internet access, I responded to several business emails and one business phone call (taken while I was halfway up a mountain trail). Being able to keep in touch with the world is a great advantage over just a few years ago, but it has its negatives as well.
Already, we are thinking of where we should go next ... back to Shenandoah or Mount Pisgah or perhaps to some trails we've never seen at Acadia National Park or Rocky Mountain National Park, or even Yosemite. As John Muir said, "The mountains are calling, and I must go."
Three years ago, my wife and I planned an anniversary trip. We would start at Skyland in Shenandoah National Park, near the northern end of Skyline Drive, and drive the length of Skyline Drive and most of the Blue Ridge Parkway (which is a continuation of Skyline Drive). We would spend nights at the National Park Service lodges along the way, all the way to the Pisgah Inn southwest of Asheville, and would hike trails all along the drive.
Our plans fell apart when we realized that some of the NPS facilities would not be open in April. They would not open until, in some cases, Memorial Day. So we decided to postpone our trip until we could do it later in the year.
This year, it appeared, would be that year. We scheduled a vacation in late September and began looking into reservations at all of the NPS lodges along our route. It was then that we discovered that the lodge at Doughton Park, not far from where the North Carolina portion of the Blue Ridge Parkway passes into Virginia, is no longer open. The notice my wife found on the Internet said a combination of the federal sequestration and other factors led to the closing of the lodge.
This amounted to a broken femur in our trip plans. The lodges we had planned to stay in were spaced a reasonable day's drive apart — Skyland, then Peaks of Otter, then Doughton Park, then Pisgah Inn. Without Doughton Park, the southern leg of our trip fell apart. We looked at commercial lodging in the Doughton Park area, and there are a few choices not far off the Parkway, but it had been our intention to experience each of the NPS lodges along the Parkway, not to venture off into commercial areas.
The problems with the sequestration, and with the entire federal budgeting process, are more serious than my disappointment with the closing of a publicly run, rustic lodge on the Blue Ridge Parkway. The Parkway lodges are classics of early motoring history, designed with respect for the environment and with minimal luxuries for the motoring public. They have a certain charm and should be profitable for the private vendors who do the actual running of the facilities.
We may go ahead with our plans for a portion of our long-anticipated drive down the Parkway, but the elimination of a key, midway stopover along the way will leave us disappointed.
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