Mount Mitchell State Park - The Highest Point East of the Misssissippi River

On our way home from Chimney Rock State Park in North Carolina, we moseyed up the Blue Ridge Parkway.  (See our post http://thetravelerstwo.blogspot.com/2013/07/flowers-of-blue-ridge.html.) This 469-mile roadway was built by several "alphabet agencies" beginning in the Franklin Roosevelt administration: the CCC (Civilian Conservatin Corps), the WPA (Works Progress Administration), the ERA (Emergency Relief Administration), and the CPS (Civilian Public Service - made up of World War II conscientious objectors).

The Parkway literally runs across the top of the mountains from the Great Smoky Mountains, thru the Blue Ridge Mountains, up to Shenandoah Valley and the beginning of Skyline Drive.  The views are wonderful.

Remember, there are almost 500 miles of these views - each spectacular in it's own way.

It is also possible to hike the Parkway and Skyline Drive.  Some folks have been known to toss a backpack on and spend a whole summer hiking from one end to the other.   Other folks just make a day of it.  Hiking it allows you to get up close and personal to sights you can't see from the road:

This is Glassmine Falls.  It is found at an elevation of 5,200 feet, and the waterfall itself is over 800 feet high!

But the highest point along the Parkway, and the highest point in America east of the Mississippi River, is the 6,578 foot peak of the Black Mountains.  Go back to the first picture.  You can see rows and rows of peaks - there are numerous different mountain ranges separating the eastern seaboard from the interior plains of America.  Geologists say that more than a billion years ago, the Black Mountains were as high as the Himalayas.  Time has worn them down (just like it's worn me down - I think I've lost an inch, and I didn't have an inch to lose!)  Even so, six of these peaks are among the ten highest in the eastern U.S.  It's because of those elevations that the flora and fauna here is more like Canada than the rest of the middle-eastern seaboard.

And here at the top of the world we find a grave!  This is the final resting place of Dr. Elisha Mitchell, the science professor who was first to measure the mountain.  In 1835, he calculated the highest peak to be 6,476 feet high.  He re-calculated it in 1844 and came in at 6,672 feet - just 12 feet off of what today's most precise instruments have come up with.  So they named the park after him, and eventually he was buried here.  That's pretty cool.  Better than the pig pen on the back of our land in Texas that I want to be buried in!