Thursday, we got a fairly early start and drove north about 70 miles to the Blue Ridge Parkway. We headed north at a very leisurely pace of about 35mph. It is a very interesting drive and we drove with a few stops at various overlooks and then we came across the Blueridge Music Center and there was a sign at the road stating music being played. We pulled in and found a very nice facility with an auditorium and a Bluegrass mueseum with lots of photos and instruments used years ago. In between the two is a nice breeze way with rocking chairs and straight chairs and two fellows playing mountain music. We later learned that one was Scott Freeman and the other Willard Gayheart. Willard is a singer, guitar player, song writer, poet and a very talented at making pencil drawings. There were several of his drawings there on display and for sale. Beautiful work that must take a lot of time to do.
Scott Freeman plays several instruments, writes and teaches several instruments with 64 students currently. I purchased one of their CD's and on it was both of their websites, http://www.scott-freeman.com/ and http://www.willardgayheart.com/ There you will find several videos of Scott playing with a group and on Willard's site you will find samples of his drawings.
We spent about 1 1/2 hours there and therefore we did not get as far up the parkway as we had wanted, but it was time well spent and a restful time. We got to travel about 40 miles of the parkway
and then it was time to turn around and head back. However, we needed to eat and we got off at US52 and there was a filling station with their usual food fare and this concession trailer with smoking grills outside and all of these signs. It had to be good because there was a Mayberry police car setting close by as well as some photos of Barney and all of these signs. We got a sandwich and treated outselves to some real greasy spoon type cooking. It was good and prepared fresh while we waited. We taveled back to our campground and after getting back in the air conditioning we decided to work some more on our rally bookwork. We decided that we had to much paperwork to do and decided to spend Friday on it so we could mail it all out on Saturday on our way to South Carolina. Therefore we did not get to drive the Parkway soutn as planned.
We decided to take US52 south as it hooks up with road 601 we are now on and goes directly into the town we are headed for. It is 2 lane until we get into South Carolina, but that is not very far and should work well. At least we will get to see some more of the country than if we went to the Interstate. So it is off south in the morning.