The Blue Ridge Parkway Rocky Knob Rec Area features include great “overlooks,” a campground I’ve never used (living just an hour away), and a picnic area with tall trees, rhododendron thickets, a couple of restrooms, many deer, and maybe 100 deteriorating table-and-grill settings along a mile or so of one-lane loop roadway that seems to have been designed for Model A Fords and may have been last paved for 1950s Volkswagens …
The Saddle Overlook is where I go for sunset photos… Still haven’t gotten up early enough to drive there for the (rumor has it) equally impressive sunrise. Buffalo Mountain is west of the Saddle and frequently stars in the sunset photos.
The woods suffered mightily in an ice storm last winter, after a couple of decades of hemlock blight (and chestnut blight before it) reduced the number and variety of really big trees. But we can all still hug what’s left… Just don’t make the bears jealous.
(This post done with an Android smartphone camera and WordPress app. I may edit or add more photos later from my laptop. Photo resolution reduced to speed uploading browser views. Hmm… Could I make any money selling higher– resolution versions?)
mild-mannered reporter who found computers & the Web in grad school in the 1980s (Wesleyan) and '90s (UNC); taught journalism, media studies, Web production; retired to write, make music, photograph sunsets & walks in the woods.
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