Day 3 - Buena Vista to Galax (maps + pictures too)
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Wake up at the KOA
The nice thing about waking up at the KOA was knowing that you had a shower waiting for you. Getting out of the tent the bad thing is finding everything covered in daddy long legs. As I wrote before the camp site must have been double-booked with the annual daddy long legs convention! We rescued dozens from our gear as we were packing things up getting ready to go.Before leaving we took our showers to wash off the crud we picked up in the rain the previous day. The shower perked us right up! With a bit of coffee made in consumed we were soon back on the road.It seemed that when we were hunting for a place to camp we went a bit out of our way so we started off the day with a bit of back tracking -- but that's OK since we weren't in any rush.
Breakfast at Otter Creek Restaurant
Shortly after hitting the road we stopped at the Otter Creek Restaurant that was right on the Parkway for some "brunch." The dining area overlooked the George Washington National Forest with an expanse of windows om the walls. We ordered our first taste of southern food: country ham and fried chicken with sides of fried okra and mashed potatoes -- with some more coffee to boot. The chicken was nice and juicy with a crispy crust. The country ham was salty, as advertised. The sides were tasty as well with the okra having a good vegetable flavor -- of course anything fried is going to be good. The potatoes were good, but not as hot as I would have liked, but they were good enough.
Driving on the Parkway
I'm not going to spend a lot of time on the parkway itself. It is something to be experienced yourself. I could go on and on about the views. The feeling of driving on a ridge, meeting the "Blue Ridge Parkway" looking over the edge on both sides of the road. All the turns. They are all great, but I don't think I can express things as well in words.So, please, drive it yourself! It's worth it!All that being said, I have to reiterate that driving without the rush of previous trips is simply a joy. When we saw an overlook that we wanted to look over just just did!
Wrapping up the day
As the day went on we started think about some road food for camping. We stopped by Rap's Orchard Gap. It's a little shop that had a couple of gas pumps and a bit of a convenience store. We didn't want to double up on the spaghetti so we got some Dinty Moore beef stew. I kept suggesting some Spam, but En resisted.Looks like rain!As we drove down the Parkway it started to look like rain again. Neither of us was keen to camp in the rain again so we started to look for a hotel. We found a Knights Inn up the road in Galax. After navigating some of the confusing roads there we found the hotel and checked in."How much for a room?""$42 for a a room with double beds.""How about something with a king size?""Well, that's more expensive. $48.""We'll take that."I like cheap hotels.Now that the room was handled: beer.Galax does not have beer within walking distance of the hotel. We tried to no avail. Walking around for an hour and a half we could not find any even after was asked for directions. The fact that it was Sunday didn't work to our advantage either. We did, however, find a dog. A nice black dog with a long wavy coat started following us keeping us company. He had an owner since he had a license tag, but not with him.Eventually someone asked if he was our dog. Nope. But they were a pair of nice ladies offered to take him in for the night and call up the license office. +1.We thought we were saved when we ran into a grocery store before closing. But the damned Virginia laws had no beer there. <sigh/>We wandered back to the hotel and I rode out a quick little trip to get some beer. The gas station that was a few miles out had some. The best they had was tall-boys of Bud. Beggars can't be choosers.With that, we had beef stew and beer with some moon pies and chips we picked up at the grocery store.Problem solved.[smugmug url="http://photos.vec.com/hack/feed.mg?Type=gallery&Data=12718857_3pkg3&format=rss200" imagecount="100" start="1" num="100" thumbsize="Th" link="lightbox" captions="false" sort="true" window="true" smugmug="true" size="L"]