Craft guilds: the folks along the Parkway really have this figured out pretty well.  Large shops are located at the busiest visitor centers for dozens of artisans to show their works.  They demonstrate crafts too.  Today we watched a fellow make ”shaker boxes”.  I have seen some beautiful creations in about every media, fabrics, flowers, woodwork, metal work, basketry, needlework, glass, pottery, even beeswax coated wildflower greeting cards.

Blowing Rock, NC…a picture perfect yuppy town with quaint bed and breakfast, cozy cafes and restaurants and dozens of shops to browse.

Fall color Fraser firs…darn wooly adelgid …that but is killing off all the beautiful deep green firs that used to cover these wonderful mountains and provide the perfect background for the flame colored oak and maple.

The parkway map has big stars on it where they recommend travelers get on and off the parkway and parkway Rangers warn not to trust a Garmin if you are looking for a way off the Parkway.  Good advice.  Ours sent us down a steep, one lane (but two way), gravel path that didn’t have a single straight section over 100 feet long.  We were in the car not the motorhome so no biggie.  Just one more fun little drive forKent.

Fall colors are further along as we head south, go figure!  It seems to be a combination of altitude and rainfall.  Anyway, it is beautiful.

Roads are curlier and more mountainous.  We crossed the Linville viaduct.  It is about a half mile section that passes through a deep gorge on the flank of the Blue Ridge.  It wasn’t finished until 1987, some 25 years after the rest of the road.  It is pretty amazing construction in unbelievable terrain.

We heard a bit more bluegrass and old time fiddle music today.  The Blue Ridge Music Center along the Parkway has open jam sessions on Friday afternoons.  Local musicians both well known and down home just get together and play.  The group started at four today but grew to 11 or so as the afternoon went on.  They ranged in age from something over 85 years old to probably around 45.  There were banjos, mandolins, guitars of more types than I recognize, and fiddles.  It was a great listen.  Along the Blue Ridge there are festivals, fiddler’s conventions, jam sessions, and live radio broadcasts every week.  Their music is very much interwoven in everyday life.  It is a wonderful notion.

The home town of Andy Griffith.  We checked out Floyds Barber Shop, The Snappy Lunch, Opie’s Candy Shop, Wally’s Service Station, and the Court House that housed Andy’s office and Otis’s cell.  They give tours of town in 1962-64 Ford Galaxy 500 police cars.  They have Barney’s salt and pepper suit on display at the museum along with an unbelievable collection of all things Andy Griffith from movie, comedy and TV days.

Some fun Mayberry trivia:

“Two chairs, no waiting” The sign in the window at Floyd’s

Andy’s desk name plate was flippable – Sheriff/Justice of the Peace

It is more than tourist stuff though

Mt Airy is home to a HUGE marble quarry.  They are mining surface stone not a deep quarry so we could get fairly close to check it out.  The employee assigned to keep us tourists from getting run over by euces was obviously pretty proud of the place and happy to tell us all about it.   Cool.

Sweeping turns and frequent overlooks provide wonderful vistas of multiple mountain ridges and little towns tucked in many of the hollows and valleys.

Waterfalls are found in steep side gullies cut by tumbling creeks.

Remnants of an early canal and lock system, water powered mills, and covered bridges are reminders of the inventive, determined people who have called this rugged area home.  Trails run along ridges and deep into steep rugged valleys.   Fall is a bit later here.  We have had to look a little harder for color but it is still beautiful country.

It is a scenic parkway not a historically accurate preservation of Appalachian life.   It is interesting to hear the current interpretive Rangers explain why an 1880’s log home sits next to 1920s grist mill.   Perfect sections of split rail fence line the road with strands of barbed wire or electric fence hidden behind them.   Peaceful rolling meadows are interspersed just so often among rocky pasture land and tree covered slopes.   It was all by design to create a drive that gave travelers what they expected or imagined life in these mountains was like.  Combine this bit of creative staging with the natural beauty of the Ridge and it is a great drive.