Wednesday, August 20, 2014

NC Mountains 2014 - Days 9 & 10

Day 9 - Saturday 8/16/14 After our morning walk we walked up to TJ’s Café to get a country ham and egg breakfast. The slice of ham was not a big as Thursday’s but still good.

Today’s entertainers were: Cody Shuler & Pine Mountain Railroad, Tony Holt & The Wildwood Valley Boys, The Little Roy & Lizzy Show, The Moron Brothers, Jimmy Fortune (of the famed - now retired Statler Brothers) and Daley & Vincent. Little Roy is Little Roy Lewis of the famous gospel singing family The Lewis Family. He is a very good musician and a cutup on stage. Jimmy Fortune performed then Daley & Vincent and then Jimmy Fortune joined Daley & Vincent and put on a fantastic performance. Barbara Fairchild was in the audience and came onstage for a song with Jimmy Fortune and Darrin Vincent.

After watching the entertainers for three days I believe they enjoy performing as much as the audience does listening to them. They all seems so happy onstage as they sang and played their music.

Day 10 - Sunday 8/17/14 We did our morning walk, ate our Blueberry Pancakes and bacon breakfast and packed up and departed about 11AM for a 30 mile drive to our next stop, Secluded Valley Campground near Newland NC. About 5 miles of the drive up hwy 221 from Marion to just past the Blue Ridge Parkway is a climb of over 1000’ but we didn’t have any problem. We did this climb two years ago but it didn’t seem as bad today - I guess we are getting accustomed to it. The campground is at about 2700’ elevation so temperature is a little cooler - about 77 when we arrived about 12 noon. We set up in site #2. The CG is nice - 60 sites around a nice pond that is stocked with fish. One side of the CG backs up to the North Toe River. The CG is owned by a man and wife team and they keep it really clean. Several of the sites are seasonal - meaning they are rented for several months at a time. We usually don’t stay at a CG that has lots of seasonal sites because they are normally junky looking but this one is not. We talked to one of the people that has a seasonal site after we arrived. He said that this was a nice quite CG, very family oriented and everyone looked out for each other.

I cooked a rack of ribs in the Dutch Oven for supper, while Lena fixed corn on the cob and butterbeans. Mumm good. Tomorrow we will explore the area.

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