Fries VA

Sun Sept 17

2017-10-13T13:07:00.000-07:00

We had to check out by 11 am, so we were up early. I used the old stove in the kitchen to make some strawberry muffins for breakfast. It was a packaged mix, and the muffins were not that great. We wanted to get home and see Pete, and we wanted to watch the Panthers game as well, so we got on the stick and packed and loaded up the car. We must have been in too much of a hurry. We were about halfway home when our host texted me and asked if we were still in the area. I said, "No, why?" She replied that we had left a charger.

Great. It was the charging cord to Tim's laptop. We were too far away to turn around, so I asked if she could mail it to us. I would reimburse her for the postage. She said she would.

As it turns out, the following day she texted me again to ask my last name and my mailing address. I didn't realize that Airbnb didn't share last names. You do all your reservations and communicating with your host throught their website or app, so I guess there's no need for them to share the last name. It was surprising to me, though.

We came home down I-77, which is not the way we drove up on Friday. We were hunting a McDonald's when we left Fries so that I could get some tea for the trip (I have to have tea when I travel...it's a thing) and Tim wanted to get something to eat since he only ate about two bites of a muffin. As you know, Fries is in the middle of nowhere, and we got kind of turned around in our search for a McDonald's. In the end, it was quicker to access I-77 from the McDonald's than go back the way we came. It also gave us different stuff to look at.

All in all, we had a really good time. We did a lot during our weekend getaway. We probably won't go back to Fries again, since we pretty much saw all there was to see there, but we would definitely go back to the mountains of VA. We love it there!

Sat Sept 16

2017-10-13T13:04:00.000-07:00

We woke up to some fog on Saturday morning. This is what the river looked like. I stopped recording in the middle of a sentence, but you can still get a sense of how different our view was when we got up on Saturday.

My camera work was so bad on that video. I don't know if you could see them or not, but a man and woman had walked out into the middle of the river to fish. The water was only about knee high. They carried a cooler with them and just plopped it down in the water.

We sat on the porch, Tim drinking coffee and me with tea, just relaxing. Tim used the Maxwell House coffee that was in the kitchen, and he said it was awful. After a bit, we walked down to the Cafe for breakfast. Here it is, the only restaurant in town.

I think I actually took this photo as we were leaving the restaurant. Notice how the weather has already improved. Saturday would turn out to be a beautiful day weather-wise, just like Friday.

On the way to the Cafe, we ran into our neighbors again, the ones with the 3 dogs. It turns out they're from Morganton. They went to Fries a few years ago to do genealogy research, as the man's family is from there. They saw the house four years ago, made an offer, and bought it as a vacation home! The man has a lot of relatives in Fries that he'd never met before. It was an interesting story, and they were very nice. We learned that their son went to ASU and that they're considering renting their home out. (They've been talking to our host.) Their house is really cute and it's clear they've really worked on it. They told us to come by and they'd show us the inside, but we never took them up on it. Just weren't sure if they really meant it. Plus, we didn't have a lot of extra time.

We continued on to the Cafe after talking to them. Our breakfast there was just okay. The restaurant actually has beautiful views, but we couldn't see them because the windows in the room we were sitting in were all covered with Halloween decorations. There was a group from Chicago in an adjacent room that had better views. All of them were wearing either a shirt, jacket, or cap of a Chicago sports team.

After breakfast, we walked back to the house and we could see everyone setting up for the festival. We saw Denny setting up under a canopy, and just started chuckling. He's apparently the unofficial mayor of Fries, has his hand in everything.

We drove over to New River Outdoor Adventures to ask about the kayaking trip. I'd read about them online. They rent kayaks, canoes, and bikes. The owner was walking back into the store as we approached. He is a double amputee and had two metal curved legs with tennis shoes on the bottom. I can't remember his name, but he was just as Denny had described-- very friendly and very knowledgeable.

We explained that we wanted to either canoe or kayak, but weren't sure which. We told him that we were beginners. He immediately said, "Don't canoe. It's too easy to tip over." We considered a tandem kayak, but he said no to that also. He said those are also very easy to tip over. Said we each needed our own kayak. So that settled that. I wasn't going to argue with someone whose goal was to keep us from tipping over!

Several different kayak tours are offered, but we chose Trip 1 after talking with the owner. We had thought that would be best after reading about it online, and he agreed. You're shuttled to a put-in point on the river, and you paddle/float down the river back to the outfitter's. It usually takes about 45 min to an hour. I liked that the description said "very little paddling required." We signed the waiver and said we'd be back at 2pm to do the trip.

In the other side of the same building, there's a deli / convenience store. We went over there to get Tim a toothbrush because he forgot his. We also wanted to check out what the deli offered. This is a picture of the kayak place. It doesn't look like much, but they knew their stuff. That blue van is what we rode in when going to the put-in spot.

On the way back to the house, we stopped at the Dollar General again so Tim could get some decent coffee for the coffeemaker. Dunkin Donuts was the best they had, so that's what we bought.

After we got back to the house, we realized that it was quickly getting very hot. After that morning fog burned off, the sun came out and the temperature really heated up. We decided to call the kayak place and see if we could just change clothes and go right back and start the trip. He said okay.

Tim said he wanted to take his phone with him, even though I suggested he NOT do that because...well...we were going to be in KAYAKS on the RIVER which is WATER, and WATER is not good for phones! He said he wanted to take it in case of an emergency, like if we needed help on the river. I still didn't think it was a good idea. I mean, we weren't going to be far from shore, and I figured there would always be somebody coming down the river in a kayak, canoe, or tube if we needed help. (I forgot to say that they also had tubing trips.)

But he was determined, so we decided to double-bag the phone (put it into two ziploc bags), and he put it in his pocket. We drove back to the kayak place, got our life jackets, paid (I think it was $55 per person), and we got in the van. The driver took us to a spot on the river that was directly in front of our rental house. He told us to paddle out to the middle of the river, then turn and head down river.

It was VERY rocky at the put-in spot. The water wasn't deep, so all the rocks stuck up out of the water. I had never kayaked in my life and didn't know how to steer. I was trying to paddle around and over the rocks, which was very difficult, and I kept getting all turned around. I was sideways, backwards, you name it. There was a family on the bank up the river, throwing tennis balls in for their lab. I'm sure we gave them quite a show, as Tim had difficulty staying off the rocks also. When we talked about it later, we realized that we should have just walked out to the middle of the river, dragging our kayaks with us, and then started down the river. The water wasn't deep, as I said, and this would've been much easier. As it was, we had a very tough start.

When we finally got away from the rocks a little bit, Tim gave me some instructions on how to steer with the paddle, but it took a LOT of practice. I am, let's say, directionally-challenged, and it just did not make sense to me to hold a paddle one way in the water in order to go another way. I'm so dumb that I can't even describe it accurately. However, by the end of the kayak trip, I was doing okay. Not great, but okay.

After we got past most of the rocks, we really started to enjoy the trip. It seemed like we were hardly moving until we looked down at the water, and then we could tell we were floating right along with the current. We just stopped paddling and floated for much of the trip, only using our paddles to steer around rocks when we needed to.

Because the river was so calm, and we had begun to relax, Tim decided to take some pictures with his phone. Here I am on my very first kayaking adventure.

And here is some video he shot:

I must admit that even though I didn't want Tim to take his phone, I am so happy to have the video and picture. I don't know if you can hear me say on the video, "You better not drop that phone!" Well, you know what's coming, don't you?

I'm sure you heard Tim say that some "rapids" were coming so he better put the phone up. There were no rapids in this river; we just called them that. Every once in a while, there would be a line of rocks across the river that caused a little waterfall-looking thing that was 1-2 feet high. We had to steer between/over the rocks and go down the little waterfall. We called them rapids, but they weren't. But when you're a beginner, even that little bit of height causes concern.

So...Tim is quickly floating toward the "rapids" and he can't get his phone back in both ziploc bags in time, so he just put it in one bag and tried to shove it in the pocket of his shorts. He leaned over to the side, trying to straighten his leg out so he could get the phone down in his pocket, and -- you know what's coming-- he tipped his kayak over and fell out.

All I saw was a plastic bag floating down the river, so I yelled, "Your phone! Your phone!" He yelled back,"That's not my phone! That's just a bag! The phone's in my pocket!" He retrieves the bag anyway, gets back in the kayak, gets over the rocks, then pulls the bag with the phone out of his pocket. The bag had a hole in it. He must've caught it on a zipper or something. But he turned the phone on and it powered up! We later learned that you're not supposed to turn your phone on after it gets wet. You're supposed to leave it off and remove the battery, neither of which we did. We could actually hear his phone ding a couple of times as we continued down the river when he got texts or emails or something. So we were thinking, "Well, maybe it's gonna be okay."

We floated/paddled for over an hour. It was very fun and relaxing, except for being worried about the phone. We saw birds on rocks in the river, and cows standing on the banks. Then we saw cows standing in the river. That grossed me out, because if they're standing in the river, they're also pooping in the river. Eventually, we saw two kayakers behind us, but they never got very close to us. I forgot to mention that at the beginning of our trip, we saw someone tubing in front of us, but she was way down river and eventually disappeared from sight.

Finally, we were approaching the take-out spot. It was right at the outfitter's place, and near a bridge that crossed over the river. Tim wanted to get out first so that he could then help me. He thought I was right behind him, so he was trying to hurry. (In actuality, I was way back from him.) In his haste, he half-jumped, half-fell out of his kayak, then fell down into the water twice due to the strong current. A young boy of about 12 who was on the bank with his own kayak ran over to help Tim get his kayak out onto the bank. We thought the kid worked there, but he didn't. He was just a nice kid. Tim pulled my kayak over to the bank and helped me out.

The boy who had helped Tim had several fishing poles on his kayak. I asked if he was going fishing and had he caught anything so far. He said he had caught a pretty big "insert name of fish here". I don't know what it was, a blue something? Anyway, I couldn't believe this child was out on the river in a kayak alone. He looked quite young, but he also seemed happy as could be and quite competent.

Tim held up the bag with his phone in it, and it was about 1/3 full of water. As we walked back up to the outfitter's, he took the battery out. Oh, I almost forgot this irritating fact-- as Tim was pulling his kayak onto the bank, he noticed a dry storage compartment in the kayak! He could have put his phone in there! The van driver did not tell us anything about a storage compartment on the kayaks!!! He wasn't nearly as nice as the owner. He should've told us about storage, and he should've given us at least some basic instructions on steering. Loser.

We chatted with the owner when we went inside to turn in our life jackets. We didn't mention the phone. He asked if we'd do it again, and we said yes.

We stopped at the Dollar General AGAIN on the way home to buy a bag of rice. We'd both heard that if your phone gets wet, you should put it in a bag or bowl of rice to absorb the water. Tim also bought a bag of Pepperidge Farm goldfish. I think he needed comfort food. We were so hoping this would work...

You can't see it in the picture, but his car key is also in the bag. It's the battery-operated kind, so we were also concerned about that being ruined. As it turned out, the key was fine, which surprised me because it got completely soaked when water got into the ziploc bag. The phone, after sitting in rice for 24-48 hours, would turn on, and Tim could retrieve messages and stuff, but it would not charge. It shorted out every time he tried to plug the charger in. So....Tim now has a new Galaxy Note 8.

We both showered (I kept thinking about the cows in the water), got ready, and walked down to the festival which was in full swing. There was a band playing, people selling food, all kinds of booths set up, all in a grassy area right by the river. We actually got halfway there and had to go back to the house because we forgot our chairs.

When we finally made it, we thought we'd sit in front of where the band was playing, but they were really loud. AND, they sounded like the music in "Oh Brother Where Art Thou" except they were even more nasal-y with even stronger southern accents. I couldn't take it. We moved our chairs down to the bank of the river, literally just feet from the river, in the shade. Then we walked back up to the hot dog place where Denny was working and got hot dogs, chips, and drinks. We don't think he recognized us, even though we don't see how that could be true after the long and thorough tour he gave us the night before.

Here we are getting ready to enjoy our lunch.

This is the view looking back at the festival from our chairs. That red caboose is an ice cream shop!

It was nice and quiet down by the river, but we could still hear the band a little. It was a different band by this time, though, much more tolerable than the first group. After finishing our hot dogs, we got some ice cream at the caboose.

The lady said this was her last day of the season, so she only had 6 flavors left, and she wasn't making any milkshakes, sundaes, etc. We both got one scoop of strawberry. Yes, that's one scoop!

Went back to our chairs by the river and really enjoyed just sitting there eating our delicious ice cream. Then we decided to walk through the festival and look at the booths (which were not that great, if I'm honest.) Here are some of the things being sold at the booths: beeswax candles, fall floral arrangements, produce, essential oils, Mary Kay stuff, jewelry, pottery, yarn and things made from that yarn, like caps and shawls. There was one booth selling Peruvian food, and the woman looked like she was from Peru. How she ended up in Fries, I have no idea. I sampled the empanadas, and they were good.

Then we decided to sit on the bleachers and listen to the band for a while.

They had boards set up on the ground where people could come and dance. Some folks even had taps on their shoes, which you can hear in this video.

We enjoyed watching this for a while. It's not our kind of music necessarily, but it was interesting to watch/listen, and just observe. The culture of this little mill town in the mountains of VA was very evident. Tim and I joked that if Mama were there, she would've sat there all day, listening to the band and watching people dance. She might have even gotten up and danced herself! I liked watching this little old lady.

She wasn't making a lot of noise with her shoes or moving around a lot, but she seemed to enjoy herself. Someone in the band told her she better not do too much; apparently, she had recently had hip or knee surgery, can't remember which. After watching all this action for a while, we went back to our chairs on the bank of the river and just sat for a while. It was very relaxing, with such a beautiful view.

Finally, we picked up our chairs and walked back to the house. I sat on the front porch, reading, for the rest of the afternoon and finisihed my Miss Julia book. I tried to take one of those panoramic shots with my camera. It came out okay, I guess.

When the sun came out from behind a cloud, it would get really hot on the porch and we'd go inside for a while. Then we'd come back out later when the sun went behind a cloud again. Tim watched some golf on TV and napped a little. He emailed his co-workers to let them know to use my cell phone number if they needed to reach him. I texted Kim to see how Pete was doing. She said he was chewing on his feet a lot. :(

At one point when I was on the porch, our host's husband drove by (the one we almost hit with the car). He asked if everything was going okay and had we gone hiking. I told him we'd gone kayaking and told him about the phone. He asked if we put the phone in rice, and I said yes. Then he asked if we took the battery out, and I said yes. He said there was a bald eagle across the river yesterday. I hate that we didn't see it. That would've been so cool! I did tell him we'd been using the binoculars to look at birds, and that seemed to make him happy.

At suppertime, we drove to the deli beside the kayak place to get dinner.

How's that for fine dining? We both ordered their specials-- catfish for me, flounder and shrimp for Tim. We had to wait FOREVER. A bunch of people came in at the same time, and there was only one guy there. He had to call someone else, who had already gone home for the day, to come back and help him cook. We found out later that this was only his second day on the job. I think he just panicked. The owner of the outfitters came in to get some beer, and we talked to him again, this time telling him about the phone. He felt bad for us, as he should have, since his employee didn't tell us about the dry storage compartment.

While waiting on our food, I took the time to look around the convenience store part of the deli, just because I think places like that have interesting stuff. I was not disappointed. I saw all of these locally made products: wine, fried apple pies and raspberry pies, honey, oatmeal raisin cookies, and a big freezer full of ice cream (which was not local).

When our food arrived, we took it out the deli's deck by the river. This was right next to the take-out spot for our kayak trip.

My catfish was really good...

But Tim's flounder was awful. He couldn't even eat it, so I gave him some of mine. The fries were just okay, and the hushpuppies and slaw were not good. We spent $21 on food we didn't really like, except for the catfish. Oh well. We posed for a quick selfie.

I very much dislike this picture of me, but I'm including it because I'm trying to remember everything, and we did stop to take a selfie. We were faking those smiles, because we were actually very irritated that our food wasn't good (except for the catfish). The sun was going down by the time we left and it made for a pretty sky.

On the way home, we stopped at the Dollar General for the fourth time in two days. We couldn't believe how packed the parking lot was. There must've been 25 cars. We got one of the only vacant spots. We thought, "What is happening in there?" But it was just a crowded Saturday night at the Dollar General in Fries.

When we walked in, the check-out lines were veeeeery long. We wanted to get a styrofoam cooler so we could take home the milk we had bought. We found a stack of them for $2.50, but they all had tiny bugs in them. We picked the least gross one, and got in line to check-out. Of course, I started looking around, observing this cultural phenomenon in Fries. There was a lady in line whose buggy was filled to the brim, overflowing actually. Her bill was over $60. Who spends $60 at the Dollar General? It had become obvious in the four times we went there that this is where everyone does their grocery shopping, since there's no supermarket in Fries. Side note: the girl checking out in front of us had a 50-lb bag of dog food and a box of tampons, a combination that I think is worthy of mentioning.

When we got back to the house, I wrote in my travel diary and Tim watched football on TV. We eventually broke down and ate some more of the Rice Krispie squares we'd brought with us since we hadn't eaten much of our supper.

Fri Sept 15

2017-10-13T12:37:00.001-07:00

Tim and I decided to go on a weekend getaway as a test run. During our trip to the Outer Banks later this month, Kim (my sister) is going to stay in our house with Pete. Tim was worried about how Pete would do without us, so we decided to take a short weekend trip somewhere, let Kim dogsit, and see how things went. As it turns out, Pete was just fine without us. Here's a picture of our handsome boy...

We didn't know where we wanted to go, so I just started searching Airbnb for places in the NC mountains. At the time, it was really hot here, so we thought we'd look for cooler weather. There just wasn't anything affordable that looked decent, so I decided to look in Virginia. We haven't been there very often, but when we have, we've always thought the scenery was beautiful. We did some hiking in Grayson Highlands State Park once and really enjoyed it, so I searched for some place near there. I found a cute house with a gorgeous view in Fries VA (pronounced "freeze"), so I booked it. More on that later.

We left early on Fri morning and went to Callahan's in downtown Newton for breakfast. It's quick, it's good, and it's not expensive-- our kind of place. So after our eggs, grits, toast, etc, we made a quick stop at the ATM and we were off. We headed straight to the park to do some hiking before checking in to our house.

It takes about 2 1/2 hours to get to Grayson Highlands State Park, and we were able to take Hwy 16 almost the whole way. The last 10 miles or so were particularly beautiful and would be spectacular in the fall.

Here's the entrance to the park:

We hadn't driven too far into the park when we stopped at an overlook. We needed to stretch our legs. Just look at this view. I love the Blue Ridge Mtns!

We took advantage of the viewfinder. Tim couldn't see out of it at first. It took a real photographer (me--haha) to show him how to use it.

Because we were there early in the day, we were the only ones at this overlook. I love it when that happens. The last time we were at this park, it was a Sun afternoon and it was very crowded. This was a completely different experience.

We drove on up the road and stopped at the Visitor Center for the same reasons everyone stops at a Visitor Center-- to use the restroom and look at t-shirts. There were also some displays of animals and some antique furnishings and equipment.

We asked for directions to the Rhododendron Trail. We knew from the research I'd done that there are wild ponies on this trail. Wild ponies!!! So off we went.

This is what the trailhead looks like. That's the start of it off in the distance.

We liked this trail a lot. It wasn't very hard, and it had a lot of different terrain. Some of it looked like this...

We had an interesting encounter with tree roots...

Yep, that's part of the trail. We also crossed a little stream, even though Tim jokingly called it a river.

We took advantage of opportunities to photograph the little bit of color we saw along the way.

At one point, we could see the road we drove in on. I had to zoom in for this picture. Can you imagine this scene in the fall?

We hadn't gone very far before we saw a sign about the wild ponies. Yay!

The trail was very picturesque...just really beautiful.

I should tell you at this point that we had seen no ponies. However, we had seen a lot of evidence of the ponies...meaning pony poop. We saw a TON of it! You can't see it in the photo above, but there were parts of the trail where we had to be on high alert because it was everywhere. Just piles and piles...everywhere. Ugh. By the looks of it, I figured there were about 5,000 ponies on this trail :)))

As we were walking along, Tim imitated the sound of a horse to try and draw the ponies out, if they were anywhere near. He said he used to do it when he was younger and his family had horses. Didn't work this time, though.

I was getting a bit perturbed about not seeing the wild ponies because they were clearly around there somewhere, if all that poop was any indication. Finally, Tim saw them among the rocks at the top of this photo:

He was using his super duper zoom lens and was able to see them. You can't see them with the naked eye. He let me look through his camera, and sure enough, there were a bunch of ponies up there. And there were people with them. Well, that made me even madder. What were they doing way up there? I had been so looking forward to seeing them along the trail. I resigned myself to the fact that we would miss the ponies. 😭

I should also mention that we did not see a lot of people on the trail. There were certainly people at the trailhead, but we saw very few once we'd hiked up the trail a bit. Again, that's the way we like it!

At this point, we came to an intersection of trails. The Rhododendron Trail continued straight ahead, renamed the North Horse Trail. And the Appalachian Trail (yes, THE Appalachian Trail) crossed the trail we were on. We were kind of excited that we were at the Appalachian Trail, so we took a selfie.

We decided to turn right and hike a bit of the Appalachian Trail. I wanted to preserve this historic moment, but as you'll see, it was a comedy of errors, proving once again that I am so stupid when it comes to technology.

The Appalachian Trail was very comfortable hiking. It was basically a path through grass. We had consulted a map and knew that we wanted to hike to a spur trail off the App Trail, and then take a different trail back down to the parking area. There was pretty scenery, being photgraphed by Tim, along this portion of the App Trail.

We passed a trail going off to the right that we thought might possibly be the spur trail, but it wasn't marked, so we kept going. Up until this point, the trails had all been very well-marked. We eventually stopped because we felt like we should've reached the spur already, but we weren't sure. I walked on ahead for a bit to see if there was any other trail that could be the spur we were looking for, but I didn't see anything. So we went back to the path we'd seen earlier and decided to take it.

As we continued down the spur, we could see over to where we had just been at the intersection of the Rhododendron Trail and the Appalachian Trail. And guess what we saw at that intersection? Two wild ponies! They were standing right at the sign where we had taken the selfie. We'd been there about 15 minutes before and had seen nothing. Now they were grazing there, with several folks around them taking pictures.

I'm using the zoom in this picture, so it makes them look closer to us than they actually were. We decided to just cut across that open area and see if we could get to them before they wandered off.

We figured they'd be gone by the time we got there, but they were still there.

Tim took a lot of pictures of them. (Well, I did too.)

We could get very close to them. They weren't skittish at all. I guess they're used to all the people on the trails.

I actually petted that horse. Guess I forgot about this sign:

There was so little grass to nibble on. I couldn't believe they were actually eating, but they were. Look how sweet he is.

And this one was clearly pregnant. Notice that all the other people had left. It was just us and the ponies!

We got so close to them, and they acted like we weren't even there. It was great! When other hikers began to show up, we finally left, but we really, really enjoyed getting to see these wild ponies.

We walked back down the Rhododendron Trail, figuring we'd just go back the way we came, but we came across a horse trail that we thought might go back to the parking area, so we took it. It had totally different scenery because it went through the woods. It actually looked kind of spooky at first...

But then it opened up and it was a pretty hike.

At the end, we came to a gate which I was afraid was locked. Thought we'd have to climb over that fence, but when we got closer we could see that the lock was just hanging there on the loop-thing. Tim took it off and we went through. You can see the parking area in the distance.

After we got back in the car, we drove the main park road loop, looking for the rental cabins. We had read that the park had them, and we thought it might be fun to rent one sometime. We never did find them, but when we looked more closely at the map, it appears that they're off the road a bit, and you have to carry your stuff in. Uh...no.

We were really hungry after our hike, but there wasn't any place to eat nearby. Tim ate a protein bar, and I decided to just try to make it to whatever restaurant we could find. Fries was about an hour away, and I thought, "Surely we'll pass something." After about 30 minutes, we came upon the Log Cabin Restaurant. We actually pulled into the parking lot, but there were hardly any cars there and we just didn't know. So we went on.

The town just before Fries is Independence VA. The drive there was very pretty, with lots of nice scenery. By the time we got to Independence, though, we were starving and decided to just stop somewhere. This place didn't look so hot outside or inside, but pizza sounded good, so we pulled in.

We ordered breadsticks and a pepperoni and mushroom pizza, because there was a coupon in the menu for this pizza. While we waited, I went to the restroom, which turned into about a 25-minute ordeal. Here's the story:

First, I had to thread my way through a section of the restaurant where the owner(?) and two females were putting together and setting up tables. When I say putting together, I mean literally putting tables together. When I got to the restroom door, it was locked, so I waited. And waited...and waited...and waited...and waited. I could hear someone in there, but they wouldn't come out.

Eventually, a little girl came up and stood in line with me, or should I say, she got in line in front of me. I didn't say anything, thinking that if the person inside ever did come out, I'd just go on in. So now it's me and a 6-yr-old waiting. Her mother was one of the females putting the tables together, and she told the kid to knock on the restroom door, which she did. Again, we waited and waited and waited.

FINALLY, a teenaged girl comes out and just walks by us as though everything was normal. I have no earthly idea what she was doing in there. I thought at one point that she might be changing clothes, but she didn't have anything with her when she came out. So anywho, she exits and the kid runs right in and closes the door. Irritated does not even come close to how I felt, but I tried to stay calm since the mom was right there. And our food hadn't come out yet, so whatever. But I was aggravated!

Again, I waited and waited and waited. I could not believe it was happening again! What was she doing? At one point, I could hear her playing in the water from the sink and singing. Finally, I had had enough, so I knocked on the door and said, "Let's go!" When I knocked on the door, it swung open a little bit, and I saw her sitting in there on the toilet. Oh geez. So I closed the door and waited another 10 hours for her to come out.

She finally bee-bops out and I go in. When I got back to the table, Tim looked at me incredulously like, "Where the heck have you been?" Right about then, our breadsticks came out. This is a picture of them. And yes, this is what an order of breadsticks looks like at this restaurant.

It was basically pizza dough (not crisp, but dough-y) with about a gallon of cheese on it. The server brought us ranch dressing and marinara sauce (which was unexplainedly cold) for dipping. Let me tell you something, before you judge me, this was freakin' awesome! When you are famished and tired, hot "breadsticks" really hit the spot.

We had barely gotten started on the "breadsticks" when the pizza arrived. We could barely get everything on the table!

I thought the pizza was a little greasy from the pepperoni, but Tim liked it. I liked the "breadsticks" better. We couldn't eat it all, so we got a takeout box. Our server was very friendly. I had told her that we were starving because we'd been driving in the middle of nowhere for a long time and couldn't find anywhere to eat. She asked where we were from, and we just said Hickory. It's easier. She said we were the third people to come in that day from Hickory!

She asked what we were doing in the area, and Tim said that we were headed to Fries to spend the night. She just looked as us, not saying anything. Finally she said, "Is there a hotel in Fries?" I said we were staying at an Airbnb rental, a little house by the river. She still looked a bit unsure, which made US a bit unsure. We thought, "Is Fries some crazy backwoods place that we shouldn't be going?" But it turned out to be fine.

While we were eating our pizza, a little girl and her dad came in to pick up a to-go order. The child put money in a gumball/prize machine right behind our booth. Apparently, she didn't get the prize she wanted, and she got mad. She puffed up, stomped her foot, and said angrily, "This place ain't good for NOTHING!" Or something like that. Then she stomped out. Tim and I started laughing, as did her dad.

They went out the door, and the waitress, who was behind the counter, looked at us. She was laughing and said, "Did y'all hear that?" We said yes, and we all laughed some more. I guess you had to be there. I put it in the blog because I don't want to forget it happened, as it was really funny at that moment.

When we checked out, the server rang us up for $18 and some change. That didn't sound like enough, so I asked, "Did you include the drinks?" She said, "No, it doesn't matter." I said, "Oh, I was going to ask for 2 teas to go." She went and got 2 teas, didn't charge us, so we tipped her $5.

The drive from Independence to Fries was another interesting route. We kept going further and further into nowhere, it seemed. Finally we got to Fries and found our house. Fries is an unincorporated mill town with a population just below 500. There's not much there. The mill that once employed everyone in the town is no longer open. But all the mill houses remain. Just a few of them are on the river. All the houses in this small town are jam-packed together on very small lots in one section of town. (I keep calling it a town, but it's really not. We did see a post office and a bank, though.)

We drove by our house at first because we weren't sure where to park. We turned onto the road behind the house, going very slowly, trying to determine if we should park back there. We were backing up and almost ran over a man who was approaching our car. He was the husband of our host and told us to park on the street in front of the house.

Here's our little mill house:

It doesn't look like much, but here's the view when you're sitting on the front porch:

That's why we rented it. We were happy with it.

We stayed on the porch a lot of the weekend.

By the way, you usually have to make arrangements to pick up a key for your Airbnb rental. Our instructions were, "The key will be on the kitchen counter." The front door was unlocked! I think the owners lived somewhere behind us. They told us that some folks from Miami had been staying in the house all week. They had come up to escape the hurricane and had left at 11am the day we arrived. So the owners had to get the house cleaned and ready for us by 4 pm. Apparently, it had been hectic for them. I really didn't have any sympathy. I mean, they make the rules. If you can't get everything cleaned and ready, then change the check-in or check-out times, or don't rent. They were actually very nice, and the house was very clean.

We had no complaints. Even though the house was old, it reminded both Tim and me of houses our grandparents lived in. Here's what it looks like as you walk in the front door.

The main bedroom:

From the windows of this bedroom, you could see (and hear!) the river.

The house had mostly older, antique-y furnishings, as in the second bedroom:

Here's the kitchen. Look at the old stove!

As we were unloading the car, I noticed an older lady sitting on the porch of the house next door. She had a cute dog on her lap. I walked over to say hello, and this is what I learned: Her name is Melva, and she has lived in that house (which was very cute, and nicer than ours) for 50 years! There is only one other person around town older than her, and that's a 90-yr-old woman who lives down the street. "Everybody else is dead," she said. She got married in a house just down the street, then lived in another house on the same street for a few years until she moved into her current house. Her husband died 4 years ago. That is a lot of info!

After we got all our stuff moved in, we took a bunch of pictures of the house, then sat out on the porch and ate some Rice Krispie squares that I'd brought along. We just sat there, enjoying the view. There were binoculars in the house, so we brought those out to look at birds on the river. There were big, long-legged birds sitting on rocks in the river. They looked like egrets or something. I don't know the correct names, but we enjoyed looking at them and saw them several times during the weekend.

We decided to walk down to the river.

There is a trail that parallels the river for about 30 miles. It's very popular for biking and walking. They've turned the entire trail into a state park.

The trail starts in town, goes by a little park by the river and in front of our house...

Then disapperas into the woods...

On our walk, we saw the only restaurant in town, The Cafe. We saw the park where the "Festival by the River" would take place the next day, and we met our neighbors on the other side. They were out walking their 3 dogs. More about this couple later.

We tried to sit out on the porch again when we got back to the house, but the sun was really bearing down on the front side of the house. We tried to pull down the shade installed for just this reason, but it blocked the view of the river. We decided to get in the car and go get some milk and soft drinks, and also look for the kayak outfitters since we were considering going kayaking the next day.

We took the main road out of town but never did see the kayak place, so we turned around and went back to a Dollar General that we had passed. Fries has no grocery stores, so this is apparently where everyone shops. We got some beverages-- Coke Zero, Power Aid, milk, and beer (the essentials!) and got in line to pay. There was a woman checking out at the other register, using about 25 coupons, and I am not exaggerating. When we got to our car, she was loading all her stuff into her trunk. She must've had 25 bags. I guess she was doing her weekly grocery shopping. Man, I'd hate to have to do that at the Dollar General all the time. Oh, and her kid had a gigantic Paw Patrol pillow that she had bought him.

After we got back to the house, we decided to walk downtown, and I use that term lightly. There was supposed to be a band playing at the Community Center from 7-10 pm. I saw this on the town's website, and people on Trip Advisor had mentioned a "foot-stompin' good time" at the Friday night gigs at the Community Center.

Well, we couldn't find the dang building. We walked all over the place, backtracked, tried to get Google Maps on our phones but we had no service. It was getting dark, and we were getting frustrated, when we finally saw a building up the hill that I recognized as the Community Center. We walked up there, and no one was there. The Comm Center houses a theater (where the music was supposed to be), a library, and some other stuff. The theater was dark, but the library door was standing open, so we went in. We could hear someone moving around in the back, but we just went back outside.

We were standing on the sidewalk when a man came out of the library and introduced himself as Denny Brooms. We asked about the music, and he said he thought that was the night before (even though that's NOT what the website said!). He asked where we were from and if we'd come to Fries just for the music. We explained that we were spending the weekend at an Airbnb by the river. He said, "Oh, Riverview Place" which is the name of our listing on Airbnb.

He then asked if we'd like a tour of the theater. We looked at each other, shrugged, and said, "sure". I mean, what else did we have to do? Apparently, Denny spear-headed a 2-year renovation of the space, and he was quite proud of it. Here's the main area inside, where the music would've been if they'd had it.

Those floors used to be grey, but they refinished them. The seats came from a school, except for the ones in the back with slatted backs. They came from the courthouse. The chairs up front are for musicians who jam there every Thur night.

He told us sooooo much history about the place, some interesting and some not. He told us all about Mr. Fries, the man the town was named for, and I mean ALL about him. There were portraits of people on the walls, and he told us who everyone was and why they were important. Most of them were country music people we had never heard of, but they had a connection to Fries. He also said that Bristol VA was the birthplace of country music. I remember thinking, "Huh?" But I didn't dare ask a question for fear of a long-winded response.

He lowered the new projector screen that he had just purchased. It hangs right above the front of the stage and they show movies on it. He needed a projector but they cost several thousand dollars. He said he found one on Ebay for $200 and bought it. The bulb for the thing cost $600 and lasts about 1500 hours. The bulb in the projector from Ebay has about half that left. He said you're supposed to keep up with how many hours you use it, but I don't think he's doing that.

It was very hot in there. He said they'd installed new central heating and air, and I wondered why it wasn't on, because we were roasting! This flag hangs on the back wall of the theater.

It's so old that it only has 48 stars. Someone donated it to the theater.

As we left, I asked his name again, and he said, "Denny, like the restaurant." Here he is, locking up the theater after our tour.

He said he'd see us at the festival tomorrow, which apparently he also organized. He said there might be 200 people there or 2 dozen. He just didn't know. (As it turned out, there were lots of people.) He said 3 bands had backed out on him. We told him we were thinking of kayaking or canoeing and he told us all about the owner of the outfitters, what a good guy he is and how hard he works. As we started to leave, he told us we could see the rest of the building if we wanted, but we just went on down the street. It was very dark by this time, and we had been in the theater for a long time. Tim said it felt like an hour, but it was probably 30-40 minutes. We weren't up for another tour!

As we walked back to the house, we talked about how Mama would've loved this guy. She would've been in there for hours. I actually like learning about the history of places, and interesting facts about them, but even I got bored after a while. The problem was that he wasn't a good storyteller. He knew all the history, all the facts, but he was not a good storyteller. He needed the skills of Regis Philbin, the greatest storyteller of all time!

We got back to the house and sat on the porch for a while, looking at the river and the stars. Then we went inside where I wrote in my travel diary (which is an old composition book) and Tim watched golf and part of a Harry Potter movie on TV. I texted Kim to see how Pete was doing, and she sent me a picture of him lying beside her on the loveseat. She said he had barely moved all night. He clearly wasn't too stressed about us being gone. Later on when we got hungry, we had some of the leftover food from the pizza place as a snack.

We did a LOT on this first day! We were tired and turned in around 11 or so.