Kathy and I wanted to get a jump on travel in foreign countries; you know, those that don’t speak English as a primary language, they eat rodents and other small wild animals, and they have odd, native dress. So, we went to the Blue Ridge Mountains of Southern Virginia for a long weekend!
Our hosts were Mark “Bless His Heart” and C-Cathy “Yeah Baby” (to distinguish from K-Kathy). Mark is a friend from my business travels, and he and K-Kathy share a common friend in single malts. They’re around our age (slightly older, but they would never admit to it). Mark is a long-term sales guy/entrepreneur, C-Cathy is a dancer, mom (of 2 boys who don’t clean up after themselves), and professional volunteer (stretching clinics for the terminally tight). Why get paid for something when you can do it for free!
Mark is from North Carolina, and C-Cathy from Virginia, both states that Yankees need a passport to visit (which was news to me, but luckily I had mine with me; K-Kathy we dressed in overalls and a straw hat and she snuck over the border).
The Blue Ridge Parkway is one of the great drives in the US…if you’ve never had the good fortune to drive it, try to do so before you die. They were fortunate enough to fall into a phenomenal cabin on the edge of the Parkway. Literally the edge. You can throw a ball from their cabin porch and hit cars driving down the Parkway. Which was basically how we spent Saturday night (see prior reference to single malt scotch); I got me 3 Ford pickups and a Chevy Nova (which I’ve always had a hard on for ever since I owned 2 of them in the 70’s). The cabin was built by freed slaves just before the civil war. It is surrounded by Jurassic Park-like “mountain laurels” (rhododendrons to us Yankees), many of them topping 10 feet high and 20 feet wide. Lovely plumage.
We arrived on a glorious Blue Ridge day; fog so dense that we couldn’t even see the groundhogs that we were crossing the highway. So dense, that it took us 5 passes by the cabin’s driveway before we actually saw it. So dense, that the local black bears couldn’t even find the woods to shit in. That’s dense.
Given the fog, we decided to make a far (that would be “fire” in English) in the 1840 era farpace and Mark cooked us an incredible dinner. The highlight was undoubtedly the blackened corn muffins. Those southerners, they can blacken anything. We talked the night away over books, politics, houses, and which wood burns the hottest such that you could actually melt iron. Turns out its hickory, in case anyone is interested. The farplace room got so hot that the couch actually started smoking, and C-Cathy’s copy of Stretching for Idiots caught far.
Saturday we began the day with a drive around the parkway, and then a hike at Rocky Knob Park. Apparently “knob” is Southern for “Cow Pie”. We saw more cow pies than rocks. Hundreds and hundreds of cow pies. Maybe thousands. Well, that’s one pair of hiking boots that won’t come out of the bag for a while. We then went for a drive around the area, only to find out that Mark has the most interesting habit of slamming on the brakes and yelling “Turkey” whenever he saw anything resembling a living being. Turkeys, possums, bear, even butterflies. Apparently some sort of fowl childhood trauma…
After hiking we went winery hopping. I never thought of Appalachia as big wine country, but the wines (especially the whites) were surprisingly good. At one winery we ran into a southern daily double; a fleet of 10 Model T’s pulled up, and the “wine nazi”. Apparently not all the Nazis went to Paraguay after the war; one settled in East Bluefoot VA. She was frightening…punk hair, no facial movement, and kept humming Deutschland Uber Alles. When the Model T crew came into the winery she told them (and I quote) “I’m sorry, you need to call ahead of you want to do a tasting with a group”. Keep in mind that there was the 4 of us and two lesbians from Ithaca NY (and if you though we were lost…) in the winery at the time. I thought that the car guys were going to cry as they moped back to their cars and drove away.
We wrapped up the weekend in typical Southern fashion…Sunday breakfast at the diner. We went to the world famous LakeView diner. And, yes, there is no lake within miles, and the view is the back of the $20/night motel next door. Lots of visitors there for some reason. Nothing, I mean nothing beats a plateful of buckwheat pancakes, grits, ground-hugging animal sausage, real maple syrup, and pecan pie. And that was just my plate. We wrapped the weekend with Mark and I singing the immortal Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Far” while driving down the parkway, behind a fleet of Model T’s. A wonderful Southern weekend; we’re now ready for whatever the third world has to throw at us!
Live every day to the fullest
Lumpy
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