The van slips off the interstate and climbs onto the Blue Ridge Parkway, where the road itself seems to breathe—ridges rolling ahead, clouds sliding through pines. Your guide, a naturalist who reads the land as easily as a map, points out an old stone wall, a stand of beech trees, then slows for a curve that reveals a sweep of mountain slopes and a distant waterfall threading white through green. The day unfurls like that: a handful of short hikes punctuated by viewpoints, each waterfall introducing itself with a different voice—thin and high, thunderous and split, a hidden plunge tucked behind a rock overhang.