ORCHARD OPENS FOR THE SEASON! Open Mon, Wed-Sat: 10-6; Sun: 12-6; Closed Tuesdays. During apple harvest mid-Sept through October The Orchard will be open 7 days/week, 10-6.
The Altapass Orchard is located right off the Blue Ridge Parkway at Milepost 328.3, down in a valley, with the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains serving as backdrop. There are many wonderful, unique places to visit on the Parkway, and you can read our blog on it to get a description of many of them (linked below).
But my personal favorite is the 102-year-old Altapass Orchard. Admittedly, there is a circuitous connection - as with everything here – through people at the Orchard to people at The Cove at Celo Mountain, which endears it to us even more. One-half of the Orchard is owned by The Blue Ridge Parkway, and the other half is held in trust by The Altapass Foundation. Bill and Judy Carson and Kit Carson Trubey are the conservators of the Foundation. Bill, a former rocket scientist, is the bridge partner of Cove at Celo Mountain estate owner, Susan Crutchfield (see our blog on the Crutchfields linked below), and Susan and Kit teach bridge lessons in our surrounding towns of Burnsville, Spruce Pine and Little Switzerland.
Altapass Orchard encapsulates just about everything loved and written about this area – great beauty, natural goodness (of award-winning heritage apples), live traditional mountain music – free - 5 days a week, 
clogging and dancing (clogging lessons!), preservation of culture through oral storytelling, a monarch butterfly program, homemade fudge and ice cream, authentic crafts and specialties, hayrides, picnics on special holidays, a food wagon and more – all in a casual setting. Bill is the storyteller of the Altapass history for the hayrides - a history steeped in the nation’s saga of Indians, settlers, railroads, and war battles.
The Orchard has been featured in National Geographic, won the prestigious Charles J. Parker Award from the NC Tourism Industry Association, and has been written up in numerous publications - including Southern Living, Our State and Blue Ridge Country. The Today show is doing a 3-day shoot this Tuesday for the 75th anniversary of The Blue Ridge Parkway. Altapass Orchard is one of the sites that will be filmed for an eventual weekend Today segment. About 60,000 visitors come through Altapass Orchard each year. There are 3,000 apple trees in production now, and at its peak, 125,000 bushels of apples were packed and shipped out of the Orchard.
Check their calendar of events, http://www.altapassorchard.com/calendar.htm, to find which day to include them on your trip itinerary. Especially if you live in a large city, this will be one of your most enjoyable WNC country adventures. You won’t want to miss this!
For more information on Altapass Orchard: http://www.altapassorchard.com/
For our blog on The Blue Ridge Parkway: http://coveatcelo.blogspot.com/2010/02/beauty-on-blue-ridge-parkway-with.html
For our blog on the Crutchfields – The Cove at Celo Mountain Estate Owners: http://coveatcelo.blogspot.com/2010/02/meet-estate-owners-at-cove-at-celo.html
Katherine,
ReplyDeleteThis is wonderful! Thanks so much for doing this for us. The only fact I found that needs changing is: "live traditional mountain music – free - 6 nights a week (7 during apple harvest)"
First, we are not open at night (except for special events), and secondly, we offer free mountain music 5 days/week. Wed-Fri from 1:45-3:15 (informal "picking") and Sat & Sun 1:00-4:30(full stage shows).
Otherwise, it all looks great to me. Bill will look it over and see if he sees something I missed.
Thanks again for this very fine recognition of The Orchard and its activities. We appreciate you.
Judy
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