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Honeymooners and couples love the romantic rooms and tobacco barns, or canoeing around the private lake. 336-325-2502; www.pilotknobinn.com; 361 New Pilot Knob Ln, Pinnacle; r $99-175, tobacco barn cabins $129-199

USEFUL WEBSITES

www.visitmayberry.com

www.visitncwine.com

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LINK YOUR TRIP www.lonelyplanet.com/trip-planner

TRIP

17 Piedmont Traditions

19 Blue Ridge Parkway: High Country opposite

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TRIP 19

Blue Ridge Parkway: High Country

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WHY GO The Blue Ridge Parkway is the most visited area of national parkland in the USA with almost 20 million visitors a year, twice as many as any other national park. Don’t be afraid to get off the Parkway, however, as many of the scenic spots are well off the main drag.

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TIME

3 days

DISTANCE

136 miles

BEST TIME TO GO

Aug - Dec

START

Grassy Creek, NC

END

Linville Falls, NC

ALSO GOOD FOR

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You can thank the Great Depression for the Blue Ridge Parkway. Though the idea of a scenic byway between the Shenandoah National Park and the Great Smokies had been around for a generation, Americans hadn’t yet invented road-tripping as a pastime. Work on the Parkway began in earnest in 1933, when the government harnessed the strength of thousands of out-of-work mountaineers in the Civilian Conservation Corps. Yet it wasn’t until the Linn Cove Viaduct - an astounding feat of bridge engineering - was completed in 1987 that the entire Parkway was finally opened to visitors. Even now, be sure to call ahead or check the website (www.blueridgeparkway.org) before you head out, as sections of the Blue Ridge Parkway are often closed after particularly nasty winters take their toll on the road’s infrastructure.

With romantic rooms, a restaurant with a tailored menu of inventive fare and a wraparound porch with rockers facing a bucolic, lazy river, the only reason you might not want to start your Blue Ridge Parkway trip at River House Country Inn and Restaurant is that you may never want to leave. About a 20-minute drive on Hwy 16 from Milepost 258/259, this Blue Ridge Mountain inn is perhaps best known for its Sunday salons, where poets, bluegrass musicians or vintners might be plying their talent, craft or wares. Stick around for the 6pm dinner for dishes like duck confit over French lentils, bacon and braised endive or berries in a Zinfandel and honey lavender reduction.

Or, if you’d prefer to start your stay on the Parkway itself, you might want to rest your head at Bluff’s Lodge. As one of the only noncamping accommodations on the Parkway, the rooms are adequately comfortable, but it’s the gobsmackingly stunning location, complete with a wraparound deck with an outdoor fireplace that practically forces one to roast s’mores while singing campfire songs or watching meteor showers. But it’s the Bluff’s Lodge Restaurant across the street that should not - under any circumstances - be missed. The “cafeteria” with easy-wipe vinyl menus and a knickknack gift store (candles! local pottery! grits!) looks like any roadside pit stop on the outside, but step inside for the best biscuits in North Carolina, nay, on Mother Earth. If you don’t arrive for breakfast, you can have them served on the side for lunch or dinner, or bag them up to go (with gravy and/or jam on the side, of course). Call ahead for the fried chicken, cooked to order for 30 to 40 minutes in a cast-iron skillet, or order the BBQ, western NC-style (heavy on the tomato) served between corncakes sealed with a layer of melted cheese.

For a bit of Italia in Appalachia, head off the Parkway at Milepost 258/259 until you get to Glendale Springs and the Holy Trinity Episcopal Church. The fresco artist Benjamin F Long, now famed for work such as the TransAmerica dome in Charlotte, started in the High Country in the late 1970s after returning from eight years apprenticing for Italian masters. Visit his Last Supper fresco in Glendale Springs; his models for the work were local residents (the model for Thomas