There’s more to western North Carolina than the Biltmore Mansion, spectacular though it is.

There’s more to western North Carolina than the Biltmore Mansion, spectacular though it is.

I’m fortunate to have a knowledgeable Carolina guide. Julie Hoadley has been coming to the area since the 1970s. Her late parents built a house on a mountain just outside of Brevard, about 30 miles southwest of Asheville.

That’s just one of the many benefits of being Julie’s boyfriend, if you can call a gray-haired 60-year-old a boy.

Nevertheless, I feel like a kid in the mountains. It’s a place where you want to play outside. We like to tour the countryside, hike to waterfalls — Transylvania County has about 250 of them — and explore the quaint mountain towns.

After you’ve done the Biltmore, try these other unforgettable attractions.

CHIMNEY ROCK

Decades ago, the first time Julie tried walking up the stairs to Chimney Rock, she froze, terrified of the view of the abyss through the openings at the backs of the steps. The park has since covered those stair backs, making the short climb much more bearable to the mildly acrophobic.

Eons of erosion separated the column of rock from the mountain behind it. The top, 2,300 feet above sea level, is a little smaller than a tennis court. A reassuringly sturdy fence allows visitors to relax and concentrate on the view.

Way below is the town of Chimney Rock, and gleaming Lake Lure. King Mountain is visible 75 miles to the east. Everywhere, the vista is stunning. It’s the backdrop that practically stole the scenes in the 1992 movie “Last of the Mohicans,“ starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Madeline Stowe.

Four miles of hiking trails snake through the park. One steep route leads to the top of the nearby Hickory Nut Falls, a waterfall over a 404-foot cliff. Rains from Hurricane Fay had closed the route when we were there, and that gave us a good excuse to follow our first inclination — to take the easier but still taxing hike to the bottom of the falls.

We could have climbed the trail to the top of Chimney Rock, but we chose the aging-tourist option of riding the elevator. That convenience came about in the 1940s. Workers used 8 tons of dynamite to blast a 200-foot tunnel into the mountain and a 258-foot shaft to the top.

By then, Chimney Rock had been a tourist attraction for more than a half-century. Jerome Freeman paid $25 in 1870 for nearly 400 acres encompassing the rock. By 1885, he had opened it to tourists, who climbed rickety stairs and traversed windswept bridges to reach the summit.

In 1900, Lucius B. Morse moved to the area from Missouri, hoping the mountain air would cure his tuberculosis. He bought 64 acres, including Chimney Rock, from Freeman.

By 1916, Morse and his brothers had cut a road up the mountain and added an upper parking lot, along with a stone gatehouse, dining area and stairways up to the rock.

Last year, North Carolina bought Chimney Rock Park — now 1,000 acres — from Morse’s descendants, and the site has become a state park.

The park, about 25 miles southeast of Asheville on U.S. 64, is open daily from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. EST and to 5:30 p.m. during daylight-saving time. Admission is $14 for adults; $6 for ages 6 to 15; and free for ages 5 and younger. Call 1-800-277-9611 or go to http://www.chimneyrockpark.com.

PARI

On Wednesday afternoons, the public is invited to tour Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute, which looks like a set from a James Bond movie. Nestled in the mountains, the complex is dominated by two gigantic radio telescope dishes, each disc 85 feet across, and a smaller one with a smiley face painted on it — a whimsical wave to Soviet satellites when they spied on the place during the Cold War.

PARI, as it’s called, still has a beeper and red light in the hallway to warn workers that visitors have entered the property. The alarm sounds when a car passes the front gate. Back when the CIA was their boss, employees knew to cover up their work. Now, the beeps allow volunteer guides to greet guests in the parking lot.

During the 1980s, hundreds of CIA employees were employed to intercept, analyze and pass on the fruits of transmissions from Soviet satellites. Scores of machine-gun toting troops ringed the perimeter. The CIA created two 35-foot-deep tunnels — apparently built as bomb shelters — that run from the main research building to the large radio telescopes.

Built in 1961, it was one of a number of stations around the world that NASA used to track satellites and communicate with early astronauts. In 1981, it was turned over to the Department of Defense, which used it to spy on Soviet satellites. Of course, the Soviets spied back.

After the Cold War ended, the station chief of the Soviet satellite spy system “sent us a picture of Smiley and said they really got a kick out of it,“ shared PARI guide Joe Phillips.

With its spy role rendered obsolete, the government planned to dismantle the compound. Local scientists succeeded in getting Congress to approve its use as a nonprofit educational research facility.

“We’re not trying to train a whole generation of astronomers here,“ Phillips said. “We’re just trying to get kids interested in science. Astronomy is the tool.“

Each year, scores of teachers and students from high school through graduate school come to PARI to learn how to use the radio telescopes. Once they’re trained, astronomy students can reserve time to operate Smiley by computer from their own institutions.

Once a month, PARI breaks out several of its powerful optical telescopes, and the public can inspect the heavens with no light pollution, only darkness from the surrounding forests. One of the telescopes is linked to the Web, so scientists can use it, too, from their hometowns.

The facility also serves as an earthquake monitoring station. It’s built on a fault zone and picks up the occasional minor tremors in North Carolina. It can also record the signature of quakes across the globe. It took 20 minutes for the shock waves of the Sumatra quake of 2004 to reach PARI.

PARI is on Macedonia Church Road off State Road 215 in the Rosman community, about 15 miles southwest of Brevard off U.S. 64. A $5 donation is asked of those taking the tours, which are given on Wednesdays at 2 p.m. Reservations are requested. Call (828) 962-5554 or go to http://www.pari.edu.

SLIDING ROCK

The hottest day you can imagine is the best time to skim down Sliding Rock in Pisgah National Forest. I approached the natural water park with a combination of dread and curiosity on an 80-degree September day. I had heard that the 7-foot-deep pool at the bottom feels like ice water.

I launched myself 60 feet down the gently sloping waterfall and plunged into the water. Arrrgh! I swam the few feet to dry rocks in record time. The water is said to range between 50 and 60 degrees, or at least 12 degrees colder than a typical Florida spring.

After the initial jolt, the water became bearable. I went down three more times, getting better speed with each plunge. I found that I went faster if I sat down near a depression in the rock to launch.

Hand rails help adventurers up to the top of the slick rock, but not to the sliding spot in the middle of the stream. There, the rock is very slippery. If you don’t step carefully, you’ll go heels up like a cartoon character, but the granite landing won’t seem so funny. (Park rangers say a lot of people are injured that way.)

The national forest has dozens of waterfalls to explore. On the way to Sliding Rock, stop and take a look at Looking Glass Falls, just a few feet from the roadside.

Sliding Rock is eight miles from the entrance to Pisgah National Forest at U.S. 276 near Brevard. Attendants and lifeguards are on duty from Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day weekend, and admission is $1 per car. The swimming area remains open the rest of the year, though the restrooms are closed. Call the Pisgah Center for Wildlife Education, (828) 877-4423.

Reporter Philip Morgan can be reached at (813) 259-7609.