Wednesday

The alarm went off at 7 AM as we wanted to be ready when Joe and Helen came at 9:30 for our first trip this summer. After a lite breakfast and our quiet times we got ready to leave. The skies were a bit cloudy as we were hoping for some rain showers. The outside temp's were very comfortable with a 68 degree reading when we left for Boone. We took the Blue Ridge Parkway all the way except for an area on the Parkway that had a detour for about 10 miles. The drive was about an hour and a half with deer standing in an on the shoulder of the Parkway in several places both going and coming. Motorcycles where out in force both going and coming. We encountered some delays due to construction as we approached Valle Crucis enroute to the Mast General Store.

At the Mast; the girls found some candy they liked, Joe and Helen found a cutter for shredding cabbage, Nancy found a couple purses for Ava and Annsley and some books, pie crust guards(tin foil always worked before) and I found a comfortable rocking chair on the back porch where I sat and enjoyed the lots of people coming and going. I spoke with a guy wearing a Tampa Bay Buccaneer shirt who was from Sarasota, Florida. Needless to say there wasn't one thing I found on my "I must have list". We took the back way out to avoid the traffic backup and wound up downtown in old Boone near ASU. We saw lots of old hippies, guitar pickers playing for money and some interesting "arts and croissants" type folks on the street.

We were looking for a restaurant called Bandana's that Nancy and I had eaten at with her family a couple years ago. The specialty was pork barbecue and that's what we all had. Very good and reasonable. Its a nice clean modern eatery. After eating we stopped at a place called Tuesday Morning as both Helen and Nancy were interested in what type merchandise they sold. To me it reminded me of a yard sale inside with some surplus junk.

We headed out of town back towards West Jefferson where we decided to pick up more jelly jars as the wild black berries should be in later this week or the first part of next week. I also want to make a batch of wild blackberry wine before we head to Florida later this month. After our stop at WalMart we headed over to Glendale Springs and once again picked up the Parkway. Its about 30 miles from there to our turn off. The weather was cloudy but no rain. We got back to the cabin around 4 PM. It was a fun day and we saw lots of beautiful mountain cabins, houses and chalet's on the Parkway. The scenery is just breathtaking as we looked down off the mountain. The day was filled with laughter and lots of interesting sights. Initially we were going to Blowing Rock to eat at the Story Street Grille as they had a wonderful meat loaf on their lunch menu, but after checking their lunch menu online before leaving we discovered they no longer serve it so we saved ourselves another hour out of the way.

We managed to get a hike in to the the top before eating any dinner which turned out to be a salad. After eating we both hand watered the flowers, veggie's and the grass until nearly 8:30. LATER