Friday

Well it was another cold morning with temps in the low 40's, yet it looked as if the day was going to start out to be a nice day. It eventually did warm up to the high 60's. After a 7:30 wake up and our quiet times we had a lite breakfast of pastry, cereal and oatmeal before we got ready and headed down off the mountain. We traveled north to on the Blue Ridge Parkway to Fancy Gap, Va. then headed south towards Cana. We stopped at the Mountain Man produce, antiques, fresh meat, cured meat, curio shop an fresh apple cider as well as live animals just laying around store.

 This store has everything and it's operated by a feller who definitely has the "mountain man" looks and is run by what appears to be his country daughters. The place is very old and somewhat rustic. We purchased some veggies but decided another produce place close to the VA/NC line was much more organized and had a clean restroom; so we finished our shopping there. This place also had everything but animals running loose. The other store had a small piglet in a packing crate and eventually a Blue Tick Coon dog got into the crate with the piglet. They seemed to be best buds.

We loaded up on apples, cabbage, honey, etc as Dan and Carole wanted to take some back to Florida on Sunday. We then headed down to Mt. Airy where we walked around the town which was closed off for the Festival of Leaves. There were hundreds of vendors as well as tons of places to eat all kings of fast foods; the most unique was the collard greens sandwich. We found a small diner that specialized in ground steak sandwiches but also had a pinto and collard green with cornbread special which was my choice. We had to wait for nearly an hour to just get in the door, but the food was good so it was worth the wait.

The gals found a kettle corn place as well as a vegetable peeler booth and stocked up on both. It was nearly 4PM before we decided to leave out for the trip back up the mountain. The temps were in the middle 70's and just an absolutely gorgeous day with bright warm sunshine and blue skies. We got back to the cabin a little after 5 then made reservations at Nikolas for supper at 6:30. We chilled had a little cheese and crackers with a glass of vino before we headed out for supper.

The gals had red snapper, Dan a fillet and myself a rib eye, The food was excellent as usual and we left satisfied. The place was really busy for a change with 20 plus cars in the parking lot. We got home a little after 8 and already the temps had dropped down into the 40's. I moved all of my tender seedlings and cuttings into the basement once again. We learned the Yanks beat the Birds in the 5th game of their series to capture the divisional win and now must play to see who wins the pennant in the American League. The new team in Washington is beating the Cards as I write this post, LATER