Destination: North Carolina & Virginia : Ridge Running : Rolling along the scenic spine of the Appalachians

We met Sidi hiking the Appalachians with a red, 10-pound pack on his back, carrying both his food supply and the family’s garbage. This would not have been a big deal except that Sidi is a dog, a 5-year-old collie.

Sidi had to carry a share because his family, Joan and Scott Stevens, of Fort Collins, Colo., had their own loads--sleeping gear, clothes, food and their 11-month-old baby, Erin.

But this had not deterred them from embarking on a 70-mile hike, five miles a day. “We stop for supplies as seldom as possible,” Scott said. “We carry enough for a nine-day stretch.”

My friend, Fran, and I were taking it a little easier, having spent, at that point, six days meandering in our air-conditioned car from south to north on the Blue Ridge Parkway and sleeping nights in comfortable motel beds.

Yet we were kindred souls--all of us trying to become better acquainted with our country, its natural majesty, its dwindling treasures. Perhaps more than that, last May, after a hard winter of work and ill health, I was in need of rejuvenation, and I was starved for scenery--unchallenging postcard stuff, soothing and serene.

I first thought of the West. But I was beckoned by an intriguing ribbon of road that unravels in the East, through North Carolina and Virginia: the Blue Ridge Parkway. It appealed to my plodding personality, one that leans toward sports such as cross-country skiing in which determination counts as much as skill.

So it happened that Fran, good sport and go-along buddy, and I were heading from the bottom end of the parkway at the Tennessee/North Carolina border to the top at Front Royal, Va., less than 70 miles from Washington, D.C.

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The speed along this 469-mile spectacle administered by the National Park Service is limited to 45 mph. Commercial vehicles are not allowed but parking on the shoulders is. It’s that kind of road; a road with not a billboard to be seen.

Built with public labor during the Depression, the parkway follows the crests of the Southern Appalachians and links two national parks, the Great Smoky Mountains and the Shenandoah. Construction began in 1935, and all but seven miles were completed by 1967.

We arrived at the Wonderland Hotel, on the western edge of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, near Gatlinburg, Tenn., and awoke to a cerulean blue sky. It was easy to forgive the hotel its breakfast of tasteless grits, as we sat in a row of wooden rockers on the sprawling front porch, chatted with some fishermen and gazed at vistas of wooded mountainsides. The homey Wonderland offers comfortable accommodations, as well as horseback riding, in a quiet valley.

The desk clerk’s advice prompted us to visit Gatlinburg, gateway to the park and an incredible tourist trap. I’ll say this for Gatlinburg: One day there was more than enough for me.

In fact, we would have darted right through had a friendly shop owner not bid us explore Glades Road. We took a slow swing around the 8 1/2-mile loop known as the Great Smoky Arts & Crafts Community, where 70 artists’ studios, along with shops, restaurants and homes are tucked in rustic settings. The loop is famous for its winter lights display, called Smoky Mountain Lights (Nov. 1 through this month), in which almost every building along the route is elaborately decorated with lights. On a screened porch at the Wild Plum Tea Room we savored a lunch of wild plum tea (with lemon and orange juices), wild plum muffins (plum and walnuts) and chicken salad with pine nuts, knowing full well that meals of this kind probably wouldn’t be ours for the next few days.

Fran was at the wheel when we left Gatlinburg and hit our first vertical ascent. I suddenly realized she was going below the speed limit--not her usual pace. I also noticed she was a strange shade of unripe lemon.

“I have a real fear of heights,” she said, foot on the brake for no earthly reason. “My God,” I wanted to say, “this isn’t the Rockies.” The incline wasn’t even 45 degrees and at its highest, the parkway is barely 4,000 feet. Instead, I politely suggested, “Why don’t I drive?,” and did exactly that for the next seven days, while Fran turned away from every scenic overlook.

The next morning, we got on the Blue Ridge Parkway for the first time a few miles south of Maggie Valley, N.C., about 14 miles up from the parkway’s southern end. Maggie Valley is a pleasant but unremarkable small town where we spent the night at the reasonably priced and comfortable Mountainbrook Inn.

We started up the parkway, but a short while later were back in civilization--bustling Asheville, N.C.--heading for the renowned Biltmore Estate, former home of George Washington Vanderbilt, grandson of railroad industrialist Cornelius Vanderbilt. You can hardly spend less than half a day at this 125,000-acre spread; many make a whole day of it.

The house and furnishings, three miles in from the gate, are a collection of the finest objects and materials imaginable, gathered from around the world. George picked the site for his 255-room country home in 1887. It remains the largest private residence in the United States, now owned by his grandson, William Cecil.

But the crowd of tourists was moving slowly, and Fran and I quickly bored of the lavish. We ducked under the velvet guard ropes and headed for the gardens and grounds, which were designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, creator of New York City’s Central Park. No press of the crowd here. The rose gardens, with 200 varieties laid out on several levels, with trellises and benches and curving walkways, were elegantly beautiful. Inside a glass-roof conservatory we found bromeliads and orchids, blooming in perfection.

A garden shop at the end of the tour tempted us to do a little acquiring of our own. We did have our mid-size sedan just waiting to be stuffed. But the rose of my dreams, the Rio Samba hybrid tea rose, a rainbow of bloom that begins as a yellow-orange-red bud and opens to a rich lipstick pink, wasn’t in stock.

“Next year,” the shop manager promised.

We found plenty to do in Asheville. At the city’s center is Pack Place, an arts and science center that includes the Asheville Art Museum, a gem and mineral museum and the 520-seat Diana Wortham Theatre. We explored the museums, had dinner at Cafe on the Square, one of several nice restaurants across the street, and saw a play.

Next morning, in a downpour, we rolled on a few miles to the parkway’s Folk Art Center, also in Asheville.

Just inside the door, as our umbrellas dripped across the slate floor, we saw an older man demonstrating an intricate basket weaving technique. Fran admired his thimble-size creations and would have been happy to talk to him all day. The center was a shopper’s paradise, offering fine weaving, quilting, wood crafting, basketry and pottery. Savor it, I figured. Who knows what lies ahead. I bought a satiny rayon chenille throw, a book about weather, a wooden spaghetti fork and a pair of earrings. Fran found a few treasures, too.

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North of Asheville the scene changed, with fewer signs of civilization and more forests and mountains: the Pisgahs, the Great Craggies, the massive Black Mountains and the Blue Ridge.

We rolled along euphorically, lulled by the slow speed, a blessed lack of traffic (not always the case) and uninterrupted vistas. Woodchucks sat at attention along the road and deer nibbled next to the asphalt. Color popped up unexpectedly. The hillsides were painted with flame azalea, white mountain laurel and pink rhododendron.

About 100 miles up from Asheville we came upon another taste of civilization, where we spent the night. A real treasure, the old resort town of Blowing Rock has charming lodgings, such as the Brookside Inn, where our breakfast, including homemade bread, was served in an airy art gallery. Blowing Rock also has the luxury Chetola Resort, which offers tennis and an indoor pool, and the cozy downtown Maple Lodge, a 10-room B&B; with country antique furnishings. We saw appealing shops and, of course, Blowing Rock itself, an outcropping of rock in the mountains, two miles south of town. A more appropriate name might be Boomerang Rock. The point is, if you throw something light enough over the edge, updrafts blow it back at you. (Admission is $4.)

Blowing Rock was a perfect place to settle into the Appalachian rocking chairs we were growing to love--these in front of our motel, the Brookside Inn--and gaze across a pond at the full moon. It also offered a supermarket, where we stocked up on picnic supplies--cheese, rolls, lettuce, fruit and bottled water. From this point north, we would have lunch with a view.

We had our first picnic at E.B. Jeffress Park, where we hiked up to the Cascades waterfall and made a profound discovery--a mile in this country is not akin to a mile of walking in the flatlands of Wisconsin, where I live. And the mountain trails are seductive. They lure you in with wide, paved beginnings, then gradually turn at some point to gravel, then dirt and sometimes end in slippery rocky steepness. But the harder the climb, the better the payoff.

We stayed the next night and had dinner at Peaks of Otter, a large, idyllic lodge on Abbott Lake. Our only dining room companions that evening were Jamie and Lindy King, a remarkable couple from the Boston area, who were doing the parkway on a tandem bike . . . IN 5 DAYS! (Did I mention that the road was nothing but a series of up, downs and arounds; that I had been driving my automatic shift car mostly in low gear.) The Kings were devouring calories at an enviable rate.

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It was late afternoon, the next day, getting on toward sunset. We had parked the car in a small parking lot at the bottom of a marked trail, just off the parkway, and entered the hiking trail leading to Humpback Mountain. Like most, it started easy, but when the gravel ran out, Fran took a pass. I went on alone. If I had seen the information on the trail map (elevation 3,650, 2 miles and strenuous), I would never have started. But I didn’t. And the few people coming down said encouragingly, “It’s worth it.” The trail got narrower, muddier, slipperier and rockier, and sometimes I feared I had lost sight of it completely in the trees. But like I said, I’m a plodder. Finally I came to the end. It was a gigantic rise of two boulders with a breathtaking view in between.

“Hey,” shouted a young couple, minuscule at a distance, perched high above me on one of the boulders. “Climb up. It’s not hard.”

They were right. My rubber-soled shoes held on the sloping rock face of the other boulder, and numerous ledges helped. I climbed to the very crest and stood alone, a cool wind in my face, looking out over a wide, spectacular valley drenched in sunset’s golden light.

That night, we reached the end of the parkway, near Waynesboro, Va. It was an anticlimactic moment since we were planning to continue on Skyline Drive through Shenandoah National Park.

In the Shenandoah, the mountain views were less dramatic, the wildlife more plentiful, and we kept crossing paths with hikers on the Appalachian Trail.

But by this time, things were different. When we took to the Deadening Nature Trail, about 30 miles north of Waynesboro, Fran was up ahead.

She spotted three deer that wanted to make friends. One approached us as I was frantically reloading my camera. When I looked up, she was only six feet away. I wondered if I should be afraid. I looked deep into her round, brown eyes; she returned my gaze. She told me about her life in the wilderness, and I was reminded again of the compelling need to preserve it.

We continued up the path, finding promises in bear droppings but no droppers. The trail was lined with black locust trees and grandfather-size black birch, which we’d never seen before. At the top, Fran looked down.

“You know,” she said, “I’ve learned that some fears can be controlled. I don’t feel nearly as afraid as I did as the beginning of the week.”

And I’d learned, firsthand, how healing nature can be.

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GUIDEBOOK: Smokies Get in Your Eyes

Getting there: American and United fly nonstop to Washington, D.C.’s Dulles Airport. Direct service (with stops but no change of planes) on American, United, Delta, U.S. Air and Northwest into National. (The northern end of the Blue Ridge Parkway is about a 1 1/2-hour drive from Washington.) Lowest advance-purchase, round-trip fares start at about $300.

Where to stay: (Some hotels close for the winter.)Brookside Inn, P.O. Box 372, Blowing Rock, N.C. 28605, off the parkway. Rates: $50 and up; tel. (800) 441-5691.

Chetola Resort, P.O. Box 17, Blowing Rock, N.C. 28605. Rates: $80-$110 per night for a double; tel. (800) 243-8652.

Maple Lodge, Sunset Drive, Blowing Rock, N.C. 28605. Rates: $60 and up for a double; tel. (704) 295-3331.

Peaks of Otter Lodge, P.O. Box 489, Bedford, VA 24523. Rates: $67-$87 for a double; tel. (540) 586-1081.

Wonderland Hotel, 3889 Wonderland Way, Sevierville, Tenn. 37862. Rates (for 1995 season): $60 and up for a double; tel. (800) 428-0779.

Where to eat: Wild Plum Tea Room, 555 Buckhorn Road, Gatlinburg, Tenn.

Cafe on the Square, 1 Biltmore Square, Asheville, N.C.

For more information: Blue Ridge Parkway Assn., P.O. Box 453, Asheville, NC 28802; tel. (704) 298-0398.

Virginia Division of Tourism, 901 E. Byrd St., Richmond, VA 23219; (800) 932-5827.

North Carolina Travel & Tourism Division, 430 N. Salisbury St., Raleigh, NC 27611; tel. (800) 847-4862.

--E.B.