Fries VA August 25-28, 2016

Day 15 – Thursday August 25, 2016 We did our morning walk around town and had breakfast. I did some reading and Lena practiced on her lap harp for awhile before we walked down near the river to The Cafe at Fries for lunch. This is the only Cafe in town. The food was good. The town has a large recreation building that was built by the founder of the textile mill. It is used as the library, town hall and also has a theater with stage. The town uses the theater for a variety of functions and on Thursdays they have a musical jam session with local musicians. About 6PM we walked to the theater to listen to the free event. There is a large floor space between the seating and the raised stage. There were 17 musicians setting in a circle playing mountain/bluegrass style music. Several women and a few men got up and did some flat foot dancing. This is a very old and popular style of dancing in the mountains. They played from 7-9PM.

Check out those prices from many years ago

Lena's Lap Harp

Day 16 – Friday - August 26, 2016 After our morning routine of walking and breakfast we drove through Galax and on to the Blue Ridge Parkway and heading North a few miles to the Blue Ridge Music Center. They have a large display on the history of the music in the area. On Fridays they have a music jam session on the breezeway so we listened to them for a couple of hours before going back to Galax for a late lunch and then on back to the campground.

Later in the day we went back to Galax to the Rex Theater. A bluegrass group named The Crooked Road Ramblers were performing. The local radio station 98.1 broadcasts the show live on radio. We won the door prize – a CD from The Crooked Road Ramblers. There were lots of men and women doing flat foot dancing for most of the two hour performance including a 80 year old man.

Day 17 – Saturday - August 27, 2016 Well Happy Birthday to me. Since it is my birthday I decided I wanted to be lazy today so we walked a couple of laps through the campground, ate breakfast, rode into Galax to Porkey's Family Buffet for lunch. Then returned to the campground to relax and read. I did get industrious and cooked some apples on the grill for our evening meal. Yummy!

Day 18 – Sunday - August 28, 2016   Starting about 7:30AM we did a 6.5 mile round trip bicycle ride along the New River State Park Trail before returning to the campground for breakfast. After breakfast we drove to Matthews Historical Farm near Galax to tour the farm and checkout the Civil War re-en actors that were camped there. There were about a dozen soldiers there in uniform performing drills and firing their rifles. They had several tents setup and an open tent where the wives and babies were setting around in period clothing much like they would have been during the Civil War. We also toured the 1900's farm house and many outside farm buildings that are original to the farm. A blacksmith was also demonstrating his craft.

View across New River

New River

Our bicycles

From there we drove on over to the Baywoods Community to see the Crossroads Primitive Baptist Church that we had seen on a map. We drove through the countryside for awhile and Lena decided she wanted to go back to the Independence Courthouse and get two more packet of the music for her Lap Harp. When we got there we discovered the courthouse is not open on Sunday so we went to a Mexican restaurant in town for lunch. The food was very good.

The day was still young so we decided to drive up to the Graysons Highlands State Park. We went there three years ago to listen to music at the Albert Hash Festival but the festival is now on Labor Day weekend. Virginia is now charging just to ride through the park now so we paid our $7 to enter the park. We have heard that North Carolina State Parks are considering charging an entry fee. After checking out the park campgrounds we drove back to Fries and relaxed/read until about dark and did a walk through the campground and stopped and talked to the owner for awhile. The campground is almost full.