This is the year that the Blue Ridge Parkway is depicted on North Carolina's version of the America the Beautiful quarter. For a parkway that is America's longest linear park, and which reportedly has been the most visited unit of the Department of the Interior's National Park Service every year except for one since 1946, it sure doesn't get a lot of respect.

That's because the Blue Ridge Parkway isn't technically considered a national park by the NPS. If you understand why that is, you're smarter than me. But I don't understand a lot of things the NPS does. Take the obscure Italian immigrant named Luigi Del Bianco, for instance.

Read more

Source: http://www.citizen-times.com/