Journeying Geographer: Day 39: Blue Ridge Parkway (Northern)

I've eagerly anticipated driving the length of the Blue Ridge Parkway. America's longest linear park, it is a 469 mile long scenic drive linking Shenandoah and Great Smoky Mountains National Parks. Work on the parkway began in 1935, and wasn't fully completed until 1987. I have only three days to drive it, which is not nearly enough to really enjoy it. Hopefully I can return some day and spend more time here.

Today's journey began near the northern end of the Parkway in Waynesboro, VA. I traveled a total of 180 miles, about 165 of them on the Parkway itself, ending my day in Floyd, VA (population 425). 5,723 miles total so far for the journey.

A geography note before I close today's entry. A key theme in geography is how people interact with their environment. It is a combination of nature and nurture. Nature, in that the physical environment places some constraints on how we can live in different areas (such as the crops we can grow due to the climate and soils, natural resources available to use, and the topography of the area). Nurture, in that our culture affects the way in which we decide to use resources and organize space. These two factors explain why people live as they do. We both modify our environment as well as adapt to the possibilities it presents. As a Geographer, when I look at places such as the Blue Ridge, I see how the physical environment and culture interact in unique ways to produce distinctive cultural landscapes. Thinking Geographically helps make sense of these landscapes by examining the interplay of physical and cultural phenomena. For example, here in the mountains, people built homes and fences from the wood that was readily available. In other areas, rock, sod, or other materials were used to construct homes, since those resources were more common.