Written by Derek Halsey
For road biking enthusiasts, their sport represents a true Western North Carolina mountain adventure.
People come here from all over the planet to road bike the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Great Smoky Mountains. Technically, the Great Smoky Mountains are a part of the greater Blue Ridge Mountains, with the demarcation line forming somewhere west of Asheville near Maggie Valley and Cherokee.
Meandering throughout the middle of Western North Carolina is the famed Blue Ridge Parkway, which is a keen destination for road bikers looking to make tracks amidst the wonderful attributes found in the natural world. The Parkway is a scenic gem, traversing the Appalachian Mountaintops for 469 miles from the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia until its end near Cherokee. Along the way, road bikers have access to the tallest mountains east of the Mississippi River, including Mount Mitchell, which has the highest summit in the eastern United States, at 6,683 feet.
The full article continues below. Click to open in fullscreen…
