If you can pick your day to drive this road, make it a clear one in October — because autumn in these mountains is one of the great natural shows on the continent, and Moonshiner 28 runs right through the heart of it.
The southern Appalachians hold an astonishing variety of trees — more kinds of tree in these mountains than in all of Europe — and in fall they don't turn all at once or all one color. They turn in waves and in a whole paintbox: sugar maples going fire-red, hickories and tulip poplars gold, oaks a deep russet, sourwoods an early scarlet. And because you're constantly climbing and dropping in elevation along this road, you drive in and out of different stages of the show — peak color up on one ridge, still-green down in a cove, past-peak on the next climb. The color generally starts high in early October and works its way down the mountains through the month and into early November.
Reflected in the still water of Fontana Lake, doubled in the wet rock of the Nantahala gorge, it's almost too much. Just take it slow, pull off often, and don't try to photograph it — you can't. Some things you just have to drive through and keep.
Photo: Jason Hollinger · CC BY 2.0
