Discover America 2025

I started the day still in the Econo Lodge in Middlesboro, KY. But my sabbatical there at least allowed me to add to my discovery of unique places in America. Middlesboro is the only town in the country built entirely in a meteor crater, in this case a three mile wide crater. And I didn’t know it at the time, but one of the scenic pictures I posted yesterday from the Pinnacle Overlook included the town down in the valley.

I received my backup key from FedEx just before noon and got “On the Road Again,” a la Willie Nelson. I drove back through the infamous tunnel in the Cumberland Gap National Park where my first key was destroyed and drove through the Cherokee National Forest in Tennessee and along the edge of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park on the way to a short stretch of the Blue Ridge Parkway up to the Waterrock Knob Visitor Center. From there, the dogs and I took a two mile hike uphill (very rocky) and back down on the Waterrock Knob Overlook. The juice was worth the squeeze as the view of the Appalachians was magnificent. If you can zoom in on the sign I posted, it shows that you could view mountains well beyond twenty miles. And from the other scenic picture I posted, you can see why this portion of the Appalachians is called the Blue Ridge Mountains, stretching from Pennsylvania down to Georgia.

Waterrock Knob was also the site of a fatal crash of a small Cessna plane in 1983. The wreckage was there for many years and became somewhat of a popular attraction for hikers. The wreckage was finally removed in 2023.

I had originally wanted to drive a much longer stretch of the Blue Ridge Parkway, but many portions of the parkway are still closed due to the damage from Hurricane Helene, which devastated North Carolina last September. But even my short stretch offered tons of scenic views of the Blue Ridge. I also wanted to hike to the Little Bradley Falls in southern North Carolina, but those trails are also still closed due to the hurricane.

After we were finished at Waterrock, I drove back down the parkway and through the town of Maggie Valley, with a population of less than 2,000, growing much larger during ski season as it is a popular tourist spot. I then drove past the outskirts of Asheville and on to my end point of the day, my son Sean’s home in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina.