Laundry day. Dave being more discrete and more organized had his nice dry laundry tucked away and mine was relegated to the bungees on the back. Everything was nice and dry by mid-day. We had coffee and hit the road, climbing back up to the Parkway, a beautiful sunny day. The Parkway was the same as yesterday, long sweepers through fresh new green with Mountain Laurel (we think) and some other orange flowers breaking up the endless green. The further south we go, the more developed the Parkway gets. Now by developed, I mean that instead of nothing but pristine wilderness, there may be a run down barn, some fence and some grazing cattle. These must be folks who were grandfathered in or refused to go when the government took over the park. It was actually nice to see a fence to add some contrast to the endless beauty. We decided to hop off the Parkway for a valley loop and found a skinny really twisty paved road with no guardrails that led down through cool hollows and busy mountain streams. I swore on a couple of occasions I heard banjos playing in the dark woods..

After the usual random left and right turns finding where the real folks live here, Dave, having a secret plan, landed us in Mt Airy, NC. Now when I saw the sign for Mt Airy, I thought it sounded familiar. Turns out, this is the town that they based the TV show Mayberry RFD with Andy, Opie, Aunt B and Barney lived. This town is still living the dream. You can get a ride around town in Andy's (or Barnie's) Ford police Cruiser. The downtown is filled with memorabilia and one shop had the theme song on an endless loop, I am sure to the delight of the employees and other shops downtown. Rumor has it that the CIA used this shop to get information out of foreign spies. 48 hours of that whistling jingle would break the toughest spy.

We walked by Floyd's barber shop and a sign said you could get a haircut from Floyd, "Still only $8.00". As is the story of my life, Fate dealt another cruel hand when the old Floyd looking guy inside told us he was closed on Thursdays and was just in cleaning up. Imagine, a haircut from a Floyd impersonator, for $8 bucks. So close and yet so far away. Next time Floyd..

We headed back north into Virginia and got back on the Parkway and headed south into North Carolina (again). I counted vehicles that passed us in a 10 mile stretch, 2 cars and 5 bikes. Nobody is up here. This area feels a lot like Vermont but the roads are a bit twistier, the farms are a little more run-down, sort of historically old, and the season much further along obviously. There are lots of fields with grazing cattle but not much agriculture. We noted how much country there still is here for the number of people.

We decided Ashville was going to be late again like last night so we opted to had north and go to Boone, NC for the night. Boone is a nice little college town tucked into the mountains, but man is there a lot of new construction going on here. Roads and buildings both so not sure what is going on.

We found a "motor lodge" that even Dave (remember this is Dave), said might just be the low point of our motel experience. Check out the pool and boating opportunities here. The kind of place you have to wait for the contruction workers to finish their showers before you take yours, not because of the hot water, but because the drains back up. And forget about Wi-Fi, they are still struggling with 1950's technologies like power and water.

So another beautiful sunny day in southern Virginia and northern North Carolina. And the marbles in peoples mouths seem to get bigger as we get further south.