Several of us returned via the Blue Ridge Parkway (which starts at the Oconoluftee Visitor Center on the southeastern edge of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, near Cherokee, North Carolina). We stayed on the parkway to highway 276 to Brevard.

We saw notable stands of R. calendulaceum along the parkway, starting around milepost 462, although many were past bloom. A north-facing bank of mixed wildflowers caught our eye at MP 437, near the Grassy Ridge Mine overlook at 5250' elevation. We also found some R. arborescens in bloom around MP 415 and beyond, notably at MP 410.