It’s hard to argue that Acadia, the Blue Ridge Parkway, the Great Smokies, and Shenandoah don’t represent the cream of what the National Park Service offers in Eastern America. There are a lot of great experiences in these top East Coast national parks, but for the truly discriminating explorer, the friends groups for these parks have truly awesome best-kept-secret suggestions.
Check out our article and video on a hike to Caudill cabin. It hides far from the trailhead, high up in isolated Basin Cove. A visit is like traveling back in time, to the early 1900s heyday of a now long-gone Appalachian community.
The National Park Service recently released a solicitation for bids on a boat rental/food service operation within Julian Price Memorial Park on the Blue Ridge Parkway.
Stretches of road elsewhere in the country are as spectacular, but nothing matches the manicured, uniquely uncommercialized, half-a-thousand-mile thoroughfare of the Blue Ridge Parkway through the lofty heart of America’s first frontier. The scenery is great, but equally memorable is the encounter with history and traditional Appalachian culture and music.
Any of these three parks is a great place to meet the Southern Mountains—but a visit to each or all is an even better way to meet the diverse and distinctive resident wildlife that populates the dense forests of the Southern Appalachians.
The Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation has showered a cascade of contributions on “America’s most scenic road.” Since its founding in 1997, the Parkway Foundation has bestowed nearly $3.5 million on Parkway projects.
In a move to help the National Park System become more fuel efficient, the National Park Service and U.S. Department of Energy are partnering to bring alternative fuel vehicles to the parks.
The National Park Service recently issued a prospectus soliciting bids for a 10-year contract for operation of Northwest Trading Post, a retail establishment near the mid-point of the 469-mile Blue Ridge Parkway.
As lovers of national parks look forward to the 2016 centennial of the National Park Service—guardian of ”America’s Best Idea”—there has never been a better time to profile the rise and role of what may be our “Second Best Idea”—the friends groups, trusts, and foundations that support those parks.