Rough Ridge (NC)

Blue Ridge Parkway.

I woke up on Day 2 (October 5th) in a dive motel in Boone, NC, a quaint, mountain, bluegrass, college town of 15,000 (named for Daniel Boone) located about 200 miles southwest of Roanoke and 100 miles northeast of Asheville. It seemed to be a place worth getting acquainted with and I spent the previous evening wandering King Street downtown. It was a lively Friday night with quite a number of young musicians, alone or in groups, strumming out bluegrass tunes. The shops and eateries were kinda cute too. I’ll have to drag Kris down here, I thought. The region is also known for some world-class gemstone mining, with several sites offering tourist-friendly options to find your own emerald or ruby in the rough.

Sunrise.

 

Rising early, I pointed the Toyota to Grandfather Mountain as my main objective for the day. But first, I had in mind a short morning stroll up Rough Ridge next to the Blue Ridge Parkway. I reached the parkway just in time for the sunrise. It was quite the spectacle. I accidentally stopped at the unmarked trailhead for Rough Ridge for a view and noticed the unsigned trail. Some other early birds confirmed this was the place. Twenty minutes later, I stood on the slabby “summit” of the Ridge, a minor promontory well below the main ridge system of Grandfather Mountain. The 1.2-mile roundtrip hike gained only a couple hundred feet and did not end at what I would normally think of as a summit, so I decided I’d better not count this as one of the Sixty. That would be lame. I may have to rewrite the rules, however, if I come up short a few months from now. I savored the view from well above 4,000 feet, where fall colors were coming on strong, before making the quick jaunt down.