Mountain Mama

Our road trip to West Virginia had an inauspicious start. We got on the freeway...and sat there. Traffic was alternately at a crawl and a standstill. (The person behind us on the on-ramp actually did a U-turn and went back up the ramp the wrong direction. That seemed totally crazy, but it took us 45 minutes to go two miles, so maybe it was worth the risk of a head-on collision.)

The traffic eventually cleared up -- we still don't know why it was stopped in the first place -- and we were on our way. The delay had its benefits, though, because we reached the Pilot Mountain scenic overlook right at sunset. It was gorgeous! Several other cars had stopped to check it out, too, and we had a little sunset community up there. We lent our jumper cables to a guy whose RV had gone dead (turned out it didn't do any good, since his battery wouldn't take a charge), took a picture for a just-married couple, and had our picture taken by a guy who'd just had one of his photos selected for "Our State" magazine (on our camera, not his!) It turned out to be a lot of fun.

We stopped for dinner in Mt. Airy. Andy Griffith grew up in Mt. Airy, and it was the model for Mayberry. (Apparently you can even take a tour of the attractions in a squad car. And the squad car tour company's phone number? 798-OPIE.) Because it was dark when we arrived, we didn't see any of the old town, but we did eat at Aunt Bea's BBQ. Don't be fooled -- Aunt Bea's has a lot more in common with a fast-food restaurant than it does with anything the "actual" Aunt Bea would have cooked. But Mike wanted to stop there because he and Patty (a former girlfriend) had stopped there on a previous road trip. And hey, the BBQ wasn't bad!

It was also a trip down memory lane for me -- I was at Pilot Mountain on my 21st birthday. A group of us were up in NC for a student government conference. I think that was the trip where we burned out the brakes on the rental car because there were a bunch of us crammed into a tiny car, and I didn't understand what it meant to put the car in low gear to go down the grade. Ah, good times.

We're in a hotel in Fancy Gap. (The name cracks me up.) This is the first time in a long time that we've taken a trip and stayed in a hotel without having reservations in advance -- most of our travel recently has either been to visit family or has been linked to a conference (where you definitely have to reserve well in advance!) Fortunately, there seem to be plenty of rooms here at the Days Inn.