Making the Blue Ridge Parkway plush

Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

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Here’s an insightful story about possible changes to our Blue Ridge Parkway. The federal government is working on a management plan for the parkway that could mean more amenities for all those fat Florida tourists:

ROCKY KNOB — Either the mountains are getting harder, or the people who spend vacation time in them are getting softer.

Consider the plight of officials at the Blue Ridge Parkway: Faced with a public increasingly seeking a cushier mountaintop experience, the National Park Service is considering a makeover for the venerable linear park that would bring more air conditioning to its lodges, along with telephones and televisions.

Primitive campgrounds along the 469-mile scenic drive would begin offering electricity to campers to power their microwaves. And new paved trails in the surrounding woods would accommodate visitors who prefer bike rides on asphalt to rugged hikes over roots and rocks.

“We’d be providing amenities that people tell us they’d like to have,” said Gary Johnson, who is heading the park service’s effort to update the parkway’s management plan. “A majority of visitors are looking for telephones and televisions in their rooms, and air conditioning and soundproofing.”

Created more than seven decades ago at a time when visitors drove Studebakers and Packards and stayed overnight in tents or log shelters, the narrow, two-lane highway atop the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia and North Carolina has become the most visited park in the national system. About 20 million people a year come to drive slowly along the road (speed limit 45 mph), hike the woods, slumber in the campgrounds and enjoy the views of fog-caressed valleys below.

“It’s an outdoor, national park experience,” said Williamsburg architect Carlton Abbott Jr., whose father was the parkway’s chief designer. “That ribbon in the sky takes you to a different place in your mind, a peaceful, contemplative place.”

Some people, though, want TVs when they get there.

The park service’s consideration of adding more ease and comfort to visitors’ experiences comes as it prepares a federally mandated general management plan for the parkway. The plan, a road map for the road’s future, is still in the early stages, and many options are under consideration. It is to be completed by 2011.

For instance, one option is to close the lodges and restaurants in the 82,000-acre park and let visitors looking for amenities drive into the towns at the foot of the mountains.

Howard Miller, a visitor from Birmingham, Ala., who parked his truck at the Rocky Knob overlook in Floyd County, said he thinks the parkway could use more amenities.

“I don’t care who you are, a hot shower is always nice,” he said. “I’ve been to plenty of parks with shower buildings.”

Other parkway visitors said they see no need to pile on comforts.

“I like it the way it is, but I’m kind of old school,” said Roger Thomas, a 59-year-old retiree from Gaithersburg, Md., who makes an annual motorcycle trip down the parkway and pitches his tent along the way. “They’ve got the bare necessities — water. And that’s all I need. I like the fact that it’s roughing it — it makes it less crowded.”

“I wouldn’t make any changes, I like it just the way it is,” echoed Robert Fleming of Goldsboro, N.C., as he strolled outside the Peaks of Otter Lodge in Bedford County.

Fleming said he has been coming to the parkway lodge for 35 years and has probably slept in all its rooms. The lodge has air conditioning, and Fleming said there’s no need to add telephones or TVs: “The way it is now is kind of roughing it.”

The other big lodge on the parkway, the Mount Pisgah Inn in North Carolina, has room TVs that pick up four local stations when the reception is good, but no phones or air conditioning.

Johnson said folks who like the ruggedness of a parkway getaway would still be able to enjoy nature undisturbed by modern conveniences. The plan under consideration, he said, would simply do a better job of accommodating those who don’t want to stray too far from modernity.

In addition to more modern lodges and paved trails, the park service is considering creating wider parking lots in some places. Visitors have abandoned the small campers of yesteryear in favor of fully equipped recreational vehicles and need more room to turn them around, Johnson said. Campgrounds that currently offer nothing more than a place to park and a firepit would be outfitted with water and electrical hookups.

All along the parkway, rangers and volunteers said, campgrounds are often empty because visitors leave the park in search of privately run campgrounds where they can plug in and wash up.

Johnson said one plan under consideration is to close underused parkway campgrounds in urban areas where visitors eschew the rigors of overnight camping. The campgrounds, he said, would be replaced by picnic tables for day-trippers.

Thousands of people have submitted comments on the management plan to the park service that have to be analyzed. Johnson said he has not yet seen the comments.

Abbott, who designed the parkway’s headquarters in Asheville, N.C., said he believes there is a good case to be made for updating facilities to bring people up the mountains to enjoy nature — but there’s a danger of going too far.

“You would think the national parks are a little bit more about derring-do and being in a new and different place,” he said. “I would hope you’re not in some cocoon watching ‘Saturday Night Live’ instead of being outside listening to the birds.”