Today we meet Don at his southern office, closer to our final destination. We head down about 45 minutes to Mill SPring, to visit Beverly Hanks property #484972 on Burt Blackwell Road (I’m giving you this to verify I have put the correct MLS number in). This parcel is about 32 acres, and is owned by the Juett family. It seems papa Juett had a pal who found 100 beautiful acres back in the late 60’s, but couldn’t afford the whole parcel. So they bought it together. Paper Juett is now 88 and resides on 7 of the acres, and his two boys live on 1 and 10, respectively. Papa and Mama are really into primitive american style, and found two old, rotting cabins on the prairie (it seems that a horse could haul a building 20 x 20, but no larger), brought them to the site, and connected them with their own construction. And what a beauty it turned out to be:
It sat on the property with a waterfall-filled creek running in front, and a couple of beautiful outdoor sculptures situated tastefully around the area. I could move in immediately! The house isn’t actually for sale now, Mr. Juett wants to expire there (direct quote), but something could be worked out.
We walked the property and very quickly resigned ourselves to the fact our feet were going to be soaked. A nice, gently sloping meadow up on high:
surrounded by sharply, downward sloping gullies on each side. We then walked back to the cabin and down the other side, along a small creekpath, mostly on the friend’s land. We crossed a little foot bridge and found ourselves on the for-sale land. filled with trees and some occasional rock formations, the land was very pretty and large enough to create several different useful areas. We made it down to the Green river, and walked along the 800 feet of river front included in the property. A beautiful, moss-covered boulder marked the boundary and I sat to have a look-see:
Well, as you can imagine, the whole package sent my mind on its busy way of spinning trails and decks and cabins and gardens. We headed out and decided not to see the other properties because one was out of my price range and the other was a “goat slope”, mostly steep mountain side.
Michael and I headed back downtown for a bit of lunch and to check out TOPS, a shoe store that people evidently drive from as far away as Atlanta to visit and I could see why. I haven’t been in many shoe stores that had a larger and more diverse selection of styles. Michael scored a pair of Merrell almost-barefoot trail runner/walking shoes and I did too! Unbelievably lightweight and great for travel.
We headed back downtown for some lunch, then back south and west to the Blue Ridge Parkway. This is a 180-mile roadway that runs from Virginia, though North Carolina and into Tennessee and is a ride through gorgeous, deciduous trees, winding gently through the Appalachian Mountains. The views go from being in a tree-lined drive to open vistas of carpeted foothills (at least they look foothill size compared to the Rockies). Here’s an idea:
We made it to mile-marker 419 and got out to hike the Graveyards Meadow (so named because at one time moss-covered tree stumps were strewn all over the valley by the wind and it looked like a graveyard), a 4-mile moderate loop. A nice, gentle walk with a few ridges, our biggest challenge was to not get our feet soaking wet in the rain and runoff-soaked path. Not too successful! After a couple hours, we were back at the car and heading back to the Ladybug.
Some “Words with Friends” and snooze time later, we head back to down for dinner and some local music. We ended up at Tupelo Honey, a great, updated take on southern food. I ordered the vegetarian bowl, a concoction comprised of layers that started with goat cheese grits, salsa verde black-eyed peas, sauteed greens and a topping of fried okra and sunshine salsa.
Oh, and everyone’s meal starts off with a fresh, flaky biscuit with homemade jam. We decided to down it with a Troy & Sons whisky flight (straight, lemongrass and bacon/jalapeno infusion – the 4th glass is just ice)):
Nuff said.
Headed out for the Orange Peel, a music venue that (just this month) has hosted Feist, Madeleine Peyroux, Jack White and Michael Franti. We entered underneath, a smaller club area called “Pulp” and cocked an ear to see how the locals sounded. We hung out looking at posters for a bit, and decided to head home. Pretty tired puppies hit the hay.