urban bicycle journeys

Chapel Hill is not exactly sea level but it is near enough to sea level that the heat of the summer is oppressive.   There is a reason the wealthy used to spend months “summering” in The Mountains.  (Some still do!).    Elevation cures the illness of hot weather.  Because we could not really go outside here in Chapel Hill,  Tootie and I went to the mountains for one night.

The Blue Ridge Parkway is one of the great bicycle rides in America.  However, to spend the night or even eat a meal,  a cyclist almost always has to descend about a thousand feet to a town of a much lower altitude.   At an elevation of 3500′ Little Switzerland NC is one of the very few spots on the entire 469 mile long Parkway where a bicyclist can stop, spend the night and have dinner right on the Parkway.   Neither of us had ever been to Little Switzerland before so we wanted to see what it was like.

This would be an up and back one night bike trip.   Leaving early, we drove our Prius three and a half hours to the Parkway and then up to an elevation of about 4000 feet, a spot on the Parkway near the town of Linville Falls.  We parked in a place that looked reasonably legal to leave our car for twenty-four hours.   We unloaded and headed out by bicycle, carrying with us all the luggage we would needed for one night and to have a picnic lunch along the way.

Biking the Blue Ridge Parkway in the summer is glorious.    Even at this peak season there is not that much car traffic.   The weather was sunny but refreshing, with temperatures in the seventies.

At lunchtime we could not find a picnic table so we ate while sitting on a guard rail.

Two or three hours after starting we pulled into the Switzerland Inn where we had made a reservation.

I really like this place.    Clean rooms, lovely view, good food, even a decent bar scene. They have lawn games out front.    A nice cross section of America was staying there, including a sizable contingent of sixty-something motorcyclists.

When there is a view this big everybody just stares at it.

We walked around.   Dinner that evening was really old school; we split a $ 33.00 chunk of meat entitled “King Cut Prime Rib au jus 14 0z.”    Delicious.

The next day we bicycled back to the car.     The views were stunning.

The Parkway went up and down, but the last seven miles were straight uphill from 2700′ to 4000′.   Tootie is turning sixty in a few months and she does not bicycle all that much.  She was very proud to have completed such a sizable climb!