Smoky Mountain High

The Cherokee Indians used to call it "the land of the blue mist." It's a rolling band of mountains that straddles the North Carolina/Tennessee border and cloaks its forested hills, sprawling meadows, and undulating two-laners in a thin, wispy blanket of everpresent haze. Today, the Smoky Mountains are more than a beautiful section of the southern Appalachians; they're a destination for some nine million travelers every year, making the Great Smoky Mountains National Park the most popular in the U.S.

With that many visitors passing through the park's gates, the prime season can mean crowded roads. So some of the best driving can be done before you reach the entrance. We began our excursion in nearby Asheville, North Carolina, which provides a great start to a low-stress adventure with a variety of interesting historical, cultural, and natural attractions of its own. You could easily spend a couple days in the area touring the Folk Art Center, climbing Chimney Rock, or hunting down the numerous waterfalls splashing around Transylvania County. Asheville itself has many quaint country shops and handcrafts stores worth poking through.

Leaving Asheville, we steered our BMW M Roadster onto the scenic Blue Ridge Parkway and headed west. Enthusiast drivers dream of finding the perfect road, one that winds for miles through lush countryside, with mountain-lined vistas, baby-bottom-smooth asphalt, limited traffic, challenging corners, and not a McDonald's in sight. The Blue Ridge Parkway is just such a road.Within a couple hundred yards, we transitioned from the bustle and ugliness of a full-blown, multilane highway and onto the more intimate and invitingly tranquil, tree-lined and impeccably manicured parkway.

It doesn't take long to lose yourself in the mystique of the Smokies. Visibility varies greatly with weather and seasons, at times limited to the point of the road snaking through a great void. Evaporation combines with transpiration, the process of plants exuding moisture, to create the ever-varying haze. The sometimes limited view puts the natural roadside splendor into stunning focus, encouraging enthusiastic driving with few distractions. Tipping deep into the throttle, those early misty miles blew by as our M-fortified sports car soared up, down, and around the tree-lined hills. Fellow motorists were congregated atop Mount Pisgah, a popular recreation area featuring lodge, campground, and hiking trails. Once thought haunted by evil incarnate, the nearby, rocky Devil's Courthouse summit can offer grand views to as far away as Georgia, South Carolina, and Tennessee.

The Blue Ridge Parkway takes you virtually to the entrance of the national park, dropping you off on U.S. 441, the Newfound Gap Road. First, though, we headed south into the Cherokee Indian Reservation and the bustling town of Cherokee.

Where once the Cherokee Nation spread out over 135,000 square miles and parts of eight states, today, the 56,000-acre reservation is home to 11,000 members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. Among the plethora of trading posts, snack shops, motels, and desiccated taxidermy experiments gone awry are some truly worthwhile stops, such as the Museum of the Cherokee Indian and the Oconaluftee Indian Village, which takes you back three centuries to the Cherokee life style of the 1750s.

Cherokee side trip or not, stop at Oconaluftee Visitor Center at the park's edge to load up on informational brochures and tour the exhibits. Nearby Pioneer Farmstead is a window to the past, showing how early mountain people lived. Just up the road, the rustic water-powered Mingus Mill grinds corn during more than half the year.