Blue Ridge Parkway: Endless Emerald Perfection

Several years ago, whilst on a motorcycle tour along the Eastern Sierra from San Francisco to Los Angeles, my wife Liz and I met a fellow biker from Europe in a roadside cafe. As we swapped many touring stories, he told us about one of his favorite rides in North America—the Blue Ridge Parkway (BRP).

We had to admit that we had never heard of it. Finally, on a Thursday morning in mid-May many years later, having ridden up from Atlanta, GA, on two Hondas, we found ourselves embedded in endless emerald perfection.

The BRP was conceived in 1933 at the end of the Great Depression by the then President Franklin Roosevelt. It was envisioned as a park-to-park highway connecting the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to the south with the Shenandoah National Park to the north.

This is a ride on an American road that is as far away from modern American commercialization as possible. It has no commercial vehicles, billboards, restaurants, cafes, gas stations, or other distractions, and very few connections to the regular road system. It’s just a fantastic winding road with breathtaking surrounding nature.