After having driven the Skyline Drive (35 mph for 105 miles) on Friday we decided to continue onto the Blue Ridge Parkway but not to dedicate ourselves to it. Saturday we found the entrance to the parkway...
... and drove about 40 miles before turning east on highway 60 over towards Appomattox, the site of Confederate General Robert E. Lee's surrender to Union General Ulysses S. Grant, thus bringing the Civil War to an end (there were skirmishes for the next few months but for all intents and purposes the war was over).
It was another brutally hot day (40 C) when we visited the Appomattox National Park where the Appomattox County Court House complex is essentially the same as it was back in the day. Due to the high heat index, all ranger guided tours were cancelled so we basically had to settle on the museum in the court house. Lots of other tourists were of the same mind so it was a bit crowded, but still quite interesting. Just off from the courthouse complex is a small cemetery where 13 (12 confederate, one union) unknown soldiers, from the last skirmish before the surrender, are buried.
Leaving the museum we drove into historic downtown (every small and large town/city in these parts has an historic downtown!) Appomattox for lunch. After lunch, it was too darn hot to wander the streets, although they looked quite interesting so maybe another time, so we headed west towards Natural Bridge, our stop for the night.
From our previous couple of days experience on the Skyline and Parkway, we decided to drift on and off the parkway as we made our way south. The Parkway is a pretty drive but you have to leave it for restaurants and other experiences in small towns. We started Sunday back on the Parkway to stop at one of the visitor centers. We planned to be on the Parkway for only about 20 miles or so. At the visitor center we chatted with the couple looking after the place and exchanged travel tales (they have a trip planned for Iceland, Greenland and Scandinavia later this year). She asked us where we were headed for the day. We told her that we thought the Parkway was pretty but we missed going through the small towns so were planning to leave the Parkway and go south on Highway 221. She looked at her watch and said that we would probably arrive in the small town of Floyd sometime around lunch time and that is a good place to stop for a rest. She told us about the old country store where you can get a bite to eat and there might even be some musicians sitting around jamming. So why not?
Leaving the Parkway we meandered through the country to Floyd, found a place to park with the wee trailer, wandered around a bit looking in a few art galleries and checking out cafe menus before going into the old country store... what a great find... not only did we have an excellent low cost lunch but there was a group of folks playing old time music on guitars, banjos, fiddles etc etc. We sat and listened for about an hour. Meanwhile we learned that Floyd is one of the key spots on the Crooked Road - Virginia's Heritage Music Trail.
We took a couple of 30 second movie clips with our new Canon camera but they came out well over 100MB so we didn't try to upload them to our Picasa gallery (yet).
Later, after lunch we chatted with a woman in an art gallery and found that this area is home to whacks of artisans and musicians (mostly old time and blue grass). We finished up our brief stay in Floyd with the purchase of a couple of beautiful locally made baskets. Just down the road and near another Parkway entrance we stopped at Fancy Gap KOA for the night.
Monday, we started out on the Parkway and immediately stopped in at the Blue Ridge Music Center where we had another great surprise... another free music performance so we looked through the fabulous "Roots of American Music" museum waiting for the group to set up. We watched the Buck Mountain Band for about an hour...
Before leaving the center we learned that Director of the Center was from Victoria BC so we asked after her and the staff member at the desk called her up. She came out and we chatted a bit about how she came to have the unique skill set for this wonderful position. Very cool.
Leaving the Music Center we also left the Parkway for the small town of Galax which the wikipedia entry says "claims to be the bluegrass capital of the world". Galax is a small town of about 7,000 and hosts the annual Old Time Fiddlers Convention ...
...which brings in over 50,000 people from far and wide. We stopped in at the Galax Smokehouse BBQ for one of the better "que" lunches we have had this side of Texas, then wandered around the downtown for a bit before continuing on to Boone North Carolina our stop at the KOA there for the night. A new item of bbq that we tried was smoked potatoes. oh my my ...holy mother of carbohydrates. If you have a smoker, throw in some potatoes and make mashed or even potato salad (with chipotle aoli, even better) and you will not be sad.
Yes, Boone is named after the famous frontiersman Daniel Boone. Sometimes, on our travels, we think we might need to adopt a quote attributed to him...
"I can't say that I was ever lost, but I was bewildered once for three days!"
Boone is the home of the Appalachian State University so there are a lot of young folks around, hence lots of cool cafes etc. We had a great pizza dinner at the Mellow Mushroom. Wandering around downtown Boone we came across a scupture of the recently deceased great Doc Watson posed playing his guitar while sitting on a bench. Nice...
Tuesday we headed back up onto the Parkway for about another 30 miles. It was totally foggy over the valleys so there was no point stopping at any of the overlooks. A few miles up onto the Parkway we stopped at the Parkway Craft Center, a beautiful location in an old manor house and primarily an outlet for various crafts folk to display and market their wares. They have different artisans doing demonstrations of their crafts every day. On this day a women was making dolls from corn husks. We didn't stick around too long as it started to rain fairly heavily.
Leaving the Parkway we drove through a few small towns before Kris spotted a sign to the Penland School of Crafts which was well worth the 15-20 minute drive up a narrow mountain road. They had numerous beautiful craft works on display in their gallery. This would be such a cool place to come and take a two week or so workshop (although a tad expensive). Sam Maloof was one of their woodworking instructors; what an experience it would have been, taking a course from him. After browsing the gallery and admiring the fabulous art work, we continued on to Asheville North Carolina for the night.
Have you ever gone to a supermarket wondering what you might have for dinner? That evening, While in a supermarket wondering exactly that, we wandered some aisles and came across...
...no, I don't think so! (Come to think of it, maybe this is a close cousin of hotdog fillings, so perhaps we should be a bit more forgiving of this southern specialty) We settled on a rotisserie chicken and some salad..
Asheville reminded us so much of Portland Oregon (population wise, Portland is about 5 times larger). Lots of cultural events, young folks on the streets, galleries, boutiques etc. One guy told us that Asheville challenges Portland as the micro brewery capital of America. We decided to spend another day to explore the city. We set out in the morning, stopped for a Starbucks where we chatted for about half an hour with a local fellow and learned some trivia about the city and the area. After coffee we drove north on the Blue Ridge Parkway for about 10 miles to the Folk Art Center where they had many wonderful arts and crafts on display and for sale. We came away with a lonely t-shirt. For lunch we ventured down to the River Art District where we found the 12 Bones Smokehouse, a bbq place recommended by the guy back at Starbucks. Well, was he ever right on! This place jumps ahead of the Galax Smokehouse in terms of favs! We had a great lunch of smoked turkey, ribs, corn pudding and most surprising of all, some terrific smoked potato salad... who knew?
While eating lunch in the covered outdoor seating area it began to rain really heavily. So we had to forego wandering around the district. Driving around in the rain became very unpleasant as Asheville is quite hilly and some of the roads turned into small rivers. We ended up taking the interstate back towards the campground. Even in a blinding rainstorm the truckers were tailgating on the interstate; 70 MPH plus with not much more than one car length between them and the vehicle in front. You begin to understand why we avoid the interstates. Anyway, watching the local news that night, we learned that it rained 3.75 inches in just over one hour in the city that afternoon.
A bit bummed out that we didn't have a chance to see as much of Asheville as we had hoped we decided to stick it out for another day despite a forecast for more rain. So Thursday when we awoke to just a light shower we donned our anoraks and headed out for the day. Luckily the rain stayed away most of the day so we had a chance to wander around downtown, sit on a pig...
...walk up Chicken Alley with it's fabulous mural...
...and go back down to the River Art District where numerous artists have open studios for the public to wander around in and chat with them. While in the art district, we decided that we might as well do a repeat on the 12 Bones experience. We arrived there around 1:00pm to find a lineup out the door and around the corner of the building. Not to worry, it only took about 20 minutes of so to get to the front of the line. This time, pulled pork, more ribs, more smoked potato salad...
... and every bit as good as yesterday.
Friday we continued our march to Atlanta as we have tickets to see the Braves host the Mets on Sunday. We split the journey into two days and stopped in Franklin North Carolina for the night. Cool little downtown area. We decided to grill up our own dinner this night so picked up some pork and fired up the griller. The campsite in Franklin looks out into the Smokey Mountains. The fog and clouds in the mountains lets you know why they are called the "smokies".
One of the interesting things we saw as we travelled through this part of North Carolina is the large number of Christmas tree farms...
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