Discover and Celebrate the Bliss of State Parks in the Asheville and Western North Carolina Area

Chimney Rock State Park
".... On January 29, 2007 Gov. Mike Easley announced the purchase the landmark Chimney Rock Park .... The park will become the centerpiece of a new state park under development in Hickory Nut Gorge...."

DuPont State Forest
".... more than 10,000 acres of forest, trails, and waterfalls between Hendersonville and Brevard, North Carolina...."

Elk Knob
"....contains a high diversity of natural communities, many of them uncommon or rare. A very diverse flora is found in Elk Knob State Natural Area, due partially to the high elevation and the rich soils. The rich, or “sweet” soils, are derived from the weathering of amphibolite, a metamorphic rock type. Rare and endangered plants such as Gray's lily, trailing wolfsbane, large purple fringed orchid, and flame azaleas are found in the natural area. The North Fork of the New River has its headwaters in the high elevations of the surrounding amphibolite mountain known as Elk Knob. The New River is thought to be one of the oldest rivers in the world. The summit of Elk Knob contains an excellent example of a northern hardwood forest which includes a beech gap subtype. The northern hardwood forest, typically found above 4000 feet in elevation, consists primarily of sugar maple, yellow birch, American beech, and yellow buckeye. Trees growing on the northern slopes and on the summit of Elk Knob are gnarled and stunted by the harsh weather conditions. The forests and rock outcrops support breeding ravens and a number of neotropical songbirds. Black bear, bobcat, wild turkey, white tailed deer, and a number of smaller mammals inhabit this rugged mountainous area...." Located 9 miles north of Boone in Wautauga Country.

Gorges State Park
".... Plunging waterfalls, rugged river gorges, sheer rock walls and one of the greatest concentrations of rare and unique species in the eastern United States are found within Gorges State Park. An elevation that rises 2,000 feet in only four miles, combined with rainfall in excess of 80 inches per year, creates a temperate rain forest and supports a collection of waterfalls...."

Click on each of the dozens of categories to the left to uncover what makes the Asheville area so vital, so intriguing and so, well, UTTERLY BLISSFUL!

From Rolf Potts' Vagabonding blog:

I've never been one of those uptight literary types who thinks that you have to have actually read a book in order to recommend it to others. So I feel no trepidation in suggesting Eric Weiner's new travelogue-slash-memoir The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World The premise of the book is simple but intriguing-- here is Amazon's description:

Part foreign affairs discourse, part humor, and part twisted self-help guide, The Geography of Bliss takes the reader from America to Iceland to India in search of happiness, or, in the crabby author's case, moments of "un-unhappiness." The book uses a beguiling mixture of travel, psychology, science and humor to investigate not what happiness is, but where it is. Are people in Switzerland happier because it is the most democratic country in the world? Do citizens of Singapore benefit psychologically by having their options limited by the government? Is the King of Bhutan a visionary for his initiative to calculate Gross National Happiness? Why is Asheville, North Carolina so damn happy? With engaging wit and surprising insights, Eric Weiner answers those questions and many others, offering travelers of all moods some interesting new ideas for sunnier destinations and dispositions.

In the imaginary Netflix queue of books-that-I'm-planning-to-read, this one has just jumped to the top. By the way, why has no one started a Netflix for books? This question, and many more, I'll leave for another day.

Sierra Club' Wild Areas and Inventoried Roadless Areas in the Pisgah and Nantahala National Forests
"...Roadless Areas (RA's) are those places in our national forests that have remained relatively free of roads, and therefore also relatively free of logging in the past 50 years or more. They are important remnants of the once great American forests. Some of them are even virgin, never-cut forest, a very rare situation today. (Loss of the US forest over time.) Sierra Club believes that these last best places are far more valuable to humankind if left uncut. Many of them should serve as the nucleus for Wilderness designation and permanent protection...."