At about 5,390 feet, the highest point on the Cherohala Skyway — fifty-mile views across the Nantahala and toward the Great Smoky Mountains. Pull all the way off.
This is the one. Santeetlah Overlook, right around five thousand three hundred and ninety feet above the sea — the highest point on the entire Skyway, and on a clear day one of the great views in the Southern Appalachians. Pull all the way off, get out, and walk to the rail.
Look at what's in front of you: ridge after blue ridge, rolling off to the horizon, fifty miles of mountains on a clear day — you can see clear toward the Great Smoky Mountains from up here. Those aren't the pointed peaks of the Rockies; these are the oldest mountains on the continent, worn down over hundreds of millions of years into these long, soft, endless waves of green. There's a haze that hangs over them, blue and dreamy, and it's not pollution — it's the trees themselves, breathing out a fine mist of natural oils that scatters the light blue. That's why they call them the blue mountains.
You are standing more than a mile above the sea. The air is thin and cool, the wind almost always moving, and the world drops away on every side. Take your time here — this is the summit of the whole experience, the view the entire road was built to reach. Boone's got the story of what it cost to get you here, and it's a whopper.
Photo: Idawriter · CC BY-SA 3.0
