A little bit of rain and a nice dinner

After a tremendous but much too large breakfast at Rose's, I went for the first sightseeing trip of this years vacation. I had planned to visit a couple of the counties in the northwestern part of the state, Ashe County and Alleghany County, two counties that I have included in my Guide to Western North Carolina (only available in Danish, but it will be available in English some time in the future). I had visited them before, but had no pictures from these two counties, and this time I wanted to make up for that. Before leaving The Irish Rose, I checked my mail and discovered a mail from Charlotte and Bill Barnes down in Matthews. They told me that they had been in contact with a man named John Hawkins, whom I didn't know at the time. He used to be leader of the Caldwell Heritage Museum, but had now retired. He was also interested in the Tom Doley case, and would like to have dinner with me, so I decided to call him, when I returned from the trip.

I told my satnav to show me the way to West Jefferson in Ashe County, my first goal of the day. As I had expected it took me north on US Highway 321 to Blowing Rock. Here I expected it to have me continue on US 221, but the lady in the box had other plans. By the way I had changed her settings so she was now speaking English (the Danish voice simply can't pronounce American Street names, and even the English voice had problems with some of them) and measuring distances in miles instead of kilometers. She suggested Blue Ridge Parkway and as you must always fulfill the wishes of a lady, I just followed her instrtuctions and entered the parkway, as it always has some good views. For the first time on this trip (or any trips for that matter) I decided to turn on my newly purchased dashboard cam, just to try it out. When I looked at the video after having returned to the B&B in the afternoon, I came to the conclusion, that I probably would have been better off, by cleaning the windscreen. Next time I used the camera I did though, and it turned out that after a few miles it was once more dirty from splattered insects. I think that's what's called "learning by doing :-), so in futute recordings I just left the windshield as it was and made no attempt to clean it.

After a little over 12 miles I left the road again per instruction, and this time I got on to US 221, and I remained on that to West Jefferson through interesting and changing landscapes from from mountains and forests to farmland. Driving on Blue Ridge Parkway is nice, but slow as the speed limit is never more than 45 miles per hour. It didn't help much to get on to US 221, as it is rather winding on this stretch. All in all it meant that it was almost 11.30 when I got to West Jefferson, and when I looked into the sky, it definitely looked as a thunderstorm was approaching.

Inside Black Jack's Pub and Grill

Nevertheless I founnd a place to park my car, and went for a walk on main street, who was rather interesting with old fashioned buildings and so on, among these The Old Hotel, which apparently was no longer a hotel. When I passed a bar on a corner, I decided to have a light lunch there. Black Jack's Pub and Grill was the name, and my lunch consisted of a house salad and a diet coke! The pub had some nice looking local beers, but as I was driving, and didn't want to be caught DUI, I just looked at them. By the way this happened to be one of only three times I had lunch on the vacation, and the next two times I was with friends, so it was my only solo lunch so to speak. After finishing lunch I took another stroll around town while listening to the church bells. When I got back to the car, the sky was almost black from the thunder clouds, but it still didn't rain.

The rain started as I left town for my next goal, Sparta in Alleghany County, but it didn't amount to much. I could have stayed on US 221, but I turned of the satnavn and instead took a somewhat smaller road, North Carolina Road 88. US 221 has two lanes and is rather narrow, but this was actually even narrower. But as I found out it was not much more interesting. Sparta, the county seat of Alleghany County, was not that exciting. I stopped at the administration building, town hall and police station, all near each other and took some pictures before I continued. The most exciting was that the town hall had a "drive up window". Never seen that before on a town hall, but what they could do for me, I never figured out.

As it was now around 2 pm, I decided to go back to Lenoir with just one more stop in Stone Mountain State Park, so I asked the satnavn to get me there. The trip was 15 miles, most of it on US 21, and I was scheduled to get there in 25 minutes. But it took quite a while longer, partly because I wanted to enjoy the surroundings as I hadn't been in these parts before, so I could see that me ETA (estimated time of arrival) was slowly postponed with 15 minutes. After 10 miles I left the highway to go by smaller roads to the state park, and that was when all hell, or at least the thunderstorm, broke loose, which made me slow down to almost a stop. When I reached the park, there was still some miles to go, before I reached the parking lot from where paths leads to Stone Mountain itself, and it was stillpouring down. When I finally got to the parking lot, the rain hadn't diminished the least, so I sat in the car for 20 minutes, waiting for it to go away, as I hadn't brought any rain gear. Finally I decided to give up and return. On my way back I made a stop at the park's visitor center. I parked less than 50 feet from the entrance, ran to the door, and when I got inside I was soaked and I had to get back to the car as well. A short - 3 minutes - video from the dash cam can be seen on my Facebook profile. At the time the video was taken I was on my way back and the rain had dimished quite a bit from when it was worst.

Somewhare in Alleghany County before the thunderstorm broke loose.

Wet and desolate I set the course for Wilkesboro. I remembered from earlier visits that they had a Radio Shack there and I wanted to buy a two way distributor for the 12 volt outlet in the car, so I could use both the dash cam and the satnav at the same time. What I didn't knew was that Radio Shack didn't exist anymore. I discovered it only when I parked my car outside where it used to be, and found out it had been turned into a Chinese Grill or something like that. Instead I tried the local Walmart, but even if they knew what I was talking about, they couldn't help me. They could provide a distributor for USB plugs, but not for an ordinary DC connector as used for cigar lighters in the old days, when smoking was normal - also in cars. But even so the visit was useful anyway as I grabbed the opportunity to buy the usual ice cooler and 28 bottles of water, some fruit and of course ice for the cooler. At this time it had stopped raining, but on my way back it started again, though not as heavy as before. When I got back to Rose it stil rained but stopped shortly after. At this time it was 95 degrees and when the rain stopped, steam was rising from the paved road. After having chatted a bit with Rose and ordered breakfast (a bit less than the one I had the same morning) for the next morning, I went to my room.

I called John Hawkins who told me that he was having dinner with a friend in Lenoir, and would like for me to come too. We arranged to meet at a Sagebrush Steakhouse at 6 pm. He told me he would be wearing a red shirt, and I told him, that I would be wearing a black t-shirt with a picture of Creedence Clearwater Revial and the text: "Never underestimate an old man, who listens to Creedence Clearwater Revival" which I do - quite a lot actually. Jonh told me he lived in Buffalo Cove which even if 14 miles from my location is still considered part of Lenoir. When I left for dinner and told Rose that I was meeting John Hawkins she told me that she knew him so she wanted to know how I knbw him, and I told her about our shared interest in Tom Dooley. When I arrived at the restaurant, John was already there, so he led me to a table were three other people were already seated. The friend that he had told me about was a young man named Kevin and the other two were John's neighbors, who had tagged along to meet the strange creature form Denmark. Everybody were very nice and especially Kevin was very interested in Denmark, and at once subscribed to my Youtube Channel to watch the video I have made about my hometown. If you want to watch it as well or some of my other videos for that matter, you can just subscribe to Daddy Sage. Some videos are narrated in Danish (videos from USA) and some in English (videos from Denmark) and some have no narration at all but are only Dashboard videos. One dashboard video, "A trip through Dooley land" is narrated in English though.

Anyway we talked a lot and John and I even managed to talk a bit about Tom Dooley before we had to break up. John told me that he would be present Friday, for a lunch arranged by Charlotte and Bill, and then he would bring me some information about the case. So we said goodbye and I returned to Irish Rose after a very good day full of ínteresting experiences. Back in the room I relaxed by checking the internet, and reading a book until bedtime.

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