Craggy Gardens
Asheville, NC · Western North Carolina
Fourteen miles up the Blue Ridge Parkway from Asheville, the road climbs past 5,500 feet to a windswept heath bald where gnarled Catawba rhododendron blanket the slopes in deep purple-pink every mid-June. Walk the short Craggy Gardens Trail through tunnels of twisted branches to the open flats, or take the 0.7-mile climb up Craggy Pinnacle for a 360-degree view of ridge stacked behind blue-hazed ridge. The 1952 stone-and-timber visitor center at milepost 364 marks the turnoff, and the high elevation keeps it cool and cloud-wrapped when Asheville swelters below.




