An installment in our Blue Ridge Travel series. Floyd VA Friday Nights Begin on South Locust Street Late Friday afternoon in Floyd, Virginia, fills in by degrees as the Friday night crowd begins to arrive. A few more cars ease from Main Street onto South Locust Street. Someone pauses at the curb and looks around. The pace…
An installment in our Blue Ridge Travel series. You leave Meadows of Dan in shirtsleeves and point the car toward Route 58 west. The road takes its time at first. It runs easy across the plateau. Once past Independence, it climbs hard, bends tight, and keeps climbing. As you work into the higher ridges, the day you…
An installment in our Blue Ridge Travel series. I love driving the Blue Ridge Parkway. Early on an autumn morning there’s a mist in the air and sunlight sparkles off the freshly mowed hayfields where round bales wait in the dew. Visitors congregate at the overlooks. They take in the horizon, nod at the quiet,…
An installment in our Blue Ridge Travel series. Mount Airy NC: A Town That Feels Like Mayberry The bronze statue outside the Andy Griffith Playhouse catches the last light of day. Sheriff Andy Taylor holds Opie’s hand, fishing poles slung over their shoulders, just as they did in the opening credits of The Andy Griffith…
An installment in our Blue Ridge Travel series. In Meadows of Dan, Virginia, the Blue Ridge Parkway passes a weathered frame building that has stood since 1892. Travelers know it as the Mayberry Trading Post. The name catches the eye because it recalls Andy Griffith’s television Mayberry, but this place is real. Its story is…
An installment in our Blue Ridge Travel series. A Valley with a Funny Name While America was toasting its new transcontinental railroad in Utah on May 10, 1869, Roanoke, VA, was just a mountain crossroads called Big Lick. Named for the large natural salt deposit, this lick attracted wildlife in droves: buffalo, deer, and elk,…
An installment in our Blue Ridge Travel series. Bluegrass music and flatfoot dancing go together like bread and butter. Go to any event with live bluegrass music, and someone will set up a dancing platform or throw a piece of plywood on the ground and start flatfooting. Flatfooting, also known as clogging, foot-stomping, or buck-dancing,…
An installment in our Blue Ridge Travel series. Porta-Potty, Johnny-on-the-Spot, Outhouse, Portable toilet. Whatever you call them, they all have one thing in common: they stay put once you set them up. They don’t go anywhere. Unless you are in Independence, VA, on the second Sunday in October, when you will see outhouses running down…