Blue Ridge Parkway - The Most Scenic Drives in America: 120 Spectacular Road Trips - page 1044

3. Buena Vista Overlook
The northern section of the Blue Ridge Parkway follows a narrow crest with views both
east,totheVirginiaPiedmont,andwest,overtheShenandoahValleytowardtheAllegheny
Mountains. The Buena Vista Overlook (one of 275 along the drive) is well worth a pause
to see its grand panorama of endless wooded ridges and hills—bringing to mind a waving
green sea.
Take a moment here, too, to contemplate the geological processes that created these
scenic marvels. Among the Earth's oldest mountains, the Appalachians once were as tall
andsharplypeakedasthefaryoungerAlpsandRockies.Sincetheiruplifthundredsofmil-
lions of years ago, erosion—that most patient and persistent of sculptors—has smoothed
their shapes into the gently rounded contours you see today. The resulting profile may be
lessspectacularthanthoseelsewhere,butlikeavenerablefamilypatriarch,theancientAp-
palachian Range is dignified by its worn and weathered countenance.
4. James River
In a looping descent, the parkway reaches its lowest elevation (649 feet) near the James
River, a placid ribbon of blue flowing through a densely wooded gorge. In the mid-1800s
a canal was dug along 200 miles of the James, the beginning of a proposed waterway in-
tended to link the Ohio River with the Atlantic Ocean. (The original plan, some historians
say, was conceived by none other than George Washington.) Modern travelers can see a
restored portion of the project via a footbridge from the James River Visitor Center. Mules
and draft horses laboriously pulled barges along the canal, pausing now and then while a
lock raised or lowered the vessel (at this lock, for instance, the vertical distance is 13 feet).
It's no wonder that the freight-hauling efficiency of railroads eventually doomed the ambi-
tious scheme to extend the canal.
5. Peaks of Otter
Climbing again, the roadreaches anelevation of3,950feet at Apple Orchard Mountain, its
highest point in Virginia. The “orchard” that gave the mountain its name is really a forest
of low, gnarled oaks, stunted by bitter winter winds on these exposed heights (the dwarfed
woodland reminded early settlers of an old, neglected apple orchard).
Ten miles south, the drive reaches the valley between Sharp Top and Flat Top—the
twin Peaks of Otter that mark the headwaters of the Otter River. Since the days of the Indi-
ans, the valley has been a favored stopping place for travelers. They are drawn not just by