FORAYS INTO VIRGINIA (Cheri)

Even though Virginia is hardly an hour away from our house, we haven't seen much of it until recently.

The last three weekends we changed our pattern, and went to Virginia twice, crossing the Appalachian Trail each time.  The picture above is of Pilot Mountain, which is between Winston-Salem and the Virginia border.

When we traveled to Kentucky this Spring, we cut through the southwest corner of Virginia, and were really taken with its wide rolling meadows.  There aren't a lot of towns in that region, which leaves a lot of space for beauty.  (Presumably agriculture, too.  We did see a lot of corn this last weekend.)

There aren't a lot of antiques fairs in North Carolina.  Someone mentioned to me that there is an annual event in Hillsville, Virginia, which is close enough for a day trip, even accounting for the hours that I generally spend ambling.  (I long ago quit asking friends if they wanted to go with me to the Moss Landing, CA show!)

The Hillsville show is similar to Moss Landing, though the tables and tents are spread across the only flat area in town.  You have to be extremely comfortable with your emergency brakes to park anywhere nearby.

One of the items we saw there:

I picked this up for myself:

The thing that struck me about these was the framing!

And then there was this admonition:

which reminded me of a sign we saw outside a defunct business a little north of here:

I saw not one, but two, booths at the event that sold reproduction segregation signs.  "Whites Only" read one, another was more explicit.  I asked one booth owner why he would sell them and he said that he was sorry if I was offended.  He had apparently practiced a response that wasn't actually an apology or an acknowledgement that he was perpetuating discrimination.

I just cannot go back to that event.

Last weekend we headed a different direction, further west, to the Virginia/Tennessee border.

First through Boone, North Carolina, which Mark hadn't seen.  I hadn't seen the historic downtown, where Appalachian State University is located, either.  It's so unusual to see a university in a such a small town, perched so far from larger population areas.

Boone has a population of just over 18,000 residents.  We chose the wrong time to drive through.  The Appalachian State Mountaineers were playing the East Carolina Pirates, and 40,000 people were in town, partying!  Lots of these bib outfits:

I got Mark  to pull over so that I could get pictures of this building just outside Boone.  So sturdy at one time, and now the facade is all that is left.

Mark got this picture while I was in a quilt shop in Abingdon, Virginia.   Neither of us could tell you what the center line of the sign says.  The funny thing is that the motel itself must have been built more recently . . . but no maintenance on the sign.

Due to the traffic in Boone and the narrow roads between there and Virginia, we ended up just finding things that we will come back to see more of.

For a while we were on the "road to Damascus," Damascus being a small town in Virginia that apparently lives off of its proximity to the Appalachian Trail.  There are countless bike shops in town and other places to get food and sporting provisions.  It would be fun for another weekend jaunt.

Seeing Abingdon, Virginia was our primary purpose, but we also wanted to see Bristol, which extends across the Virginia/Tennessee border.  Abingdon has more beautiful, in-use historic buildings than most towns its size do, and Bristol has the same vibe, spreading through a fairly large downtown.

We had brought bags so that we could stay overnight and spend time walking these downtowns, getting pictures, etc., however when I looked to see what was available that night we realized why it seemed that everyone on the streets of Bristol was a tourist . . .

They were tourists.  NASCAR was holding events at the Bristol Motor Speedway all weekend long.

Before coming back for a long weekend, we'll check the local events calendars.  We stopped at Anthony's Desserts in Abingdon, got some great ice cream and baked goods, and headed back on the alternate route (a freeway).