Hike along the Parkway to Craggy Gardens

Catawba Rhododendrons

Species Unknown?

Blueberries Anyone?

It’s been awhile since I’d been up to Craggy Gardens so with a few free hours over the Memorial Day weekend, I headed up with a friend. There was plenty of parking, as apparently this wasn’t on many peoples “must visit” list this weekend.  Lot’s of picnic tables, and even a real working toilet facility makes this a great place to start the hike. It was considerably cooler up here and the first thing we both noticed was how winded we both were, after just 10 minutes of walking. It’s easy to forget that altitude affects more than attitude around here…it greatly affects your breathing. So we paced ourselves and continued on and I am so glad we did. One of the few things I really miss in leaving New Hampshire are the plethora of wild blueberries and I felt as though I hit paydirt here. Granted, the fields weren’t completely filled with blueberry bushes, but there was more than I’ve seen in years. The flowers just starting to close up and turn to berries, but I plan on going back up in 4 weeks to see how they are progressing…can’t wait to bake my first batch of blueberry muffins! Just as a side note- there are dozens of varieties of blueberry plants- some tall bushes, other are lower and there are some that actually look to be more like grown cover- these appeared to be the talker bush variety. The Rhododendrons hadn’t bloomed yet, but we did notice an odd bush, probably a small tree. It appeared to be bared except for interestingly shaped red-dish leaves that are well spaced- I have included a picture ifanyone recognizes it, please let me know. As we reached the Bald area of the gardens and read the informational plaque- we tried to envision herds of Elk and Bison grazing in the open field at an altitude of over 5300 feet above sea level. The tall, lushly green, wavy grass helped add to that vision, but what I really kept coming up with for a vision was Julie Andrews with the Sound of Music playing in the background. From there we wondered through a tunnel of Catawba Rhododendrons, coming out to a breathtaking view of what I call mountain echoes…with the parkway snaking along in the background.  We spent several hours just wondering, taking pictures of birds and plants and the views- how seldom do we just wander down a path, with no where in particular to go and no need to watch the clock. As we headed back to the car, I said a quite thank to Mr. Roosevelt for acting on his the vision back on 1935.

Mountain Echoes

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010 at 1:08 pm and is filed under Ramblings from a Realtor. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.