This is a retrospective blog of my seven-week exploration of Virginia along with a journey through the Shenandoah National Park and on down the Blue Ridge Parkway to Cherokee, North Carolina. 'Retrospective' means simply that it wasn't written during the trip, but is being written in hindsight a little over a year later. Baaswell Sheep accompanied me and is writing the blog in the way he's done my later blogs, since he's so good with the color commentary. Unfortunately, since I didn't plan for this blog back them, my pictures are limited to the major attractions, but I'll try to make those galleries a little bigger than I do in my later blogs.
Select/click any image to see it at double (or more) the current size. Select/click on the large image or any part of the darkened area to return to the blog page. Note: Table of contents is now located at the bottom of the page.
Today is Juneteenth, so my companion did not have to work – well, not in the conventional way. He spent much of the late morning and early afternoon cleaning pictures off his smartphone, as he was running out of memory and still has four weeks of this trip still to go. Of course, it continued to be close to 100 degrees outside, so he wasn't exactly anxious to go anywhere. In the end, though, cabin fever got the better of him and we set out to explore US 220 heading south out of Clifton Forge. My companion had traveled this road many a time, going back to his youth when his parents brought him to Clifton Forge, but he had never had any good opportunity to look at anything along it since they were always hurrying along. Leaving at three o'clock in the afternoon didn't give him a lot of time, but he did end up checking out a couple of sights.
James River, Iron Gate, VA
We stopped at the northernmost road crossing of the the mighty James River, which empties 250 miles east of here into the Chesapeake Bay, reaching a width there at the mouth of over ten miles. At this end it's a mere ~150 feet wide, and just a mile north of here is where the James begins with the merging of the Jackson River and the Cowpasture River. For the curious, the Jackson begins at Lake Moomaw and runs south to Covington and then east through Low Moor and Clifton Forge before turning south to join the Cowpasture below Iron Gate.
Eagle Rock, VA
My companion knew the name Eagle Rock since he was a child, and always knew it lay to the east of US 220 across a bridge over the James River, but had never once been over to see what lay beyond that bridge. Well, it's not much: the town is pretty much dictionary definition 'dead', but there was one silver lining. Alongside VA 43 just northwest of town is a preserved collection of lime kilns, which made for a great half-hour stop where we learned the history of lime kilns in general and this specific set of kilns, and got to walk around the area and view them from different angles. If you should visit, look for the box with the four page interpretive history, as it's very informative.
Across from a still operating Kroger that's older than my companion (and that's really saying something) is Bella Pizza, Pasta, and Subs, another in the list of places that my companion had known of for decades but never had a chance to visit. Nothing remarkable about the place, but the baked spaghetti was pretty good and I enjoyed the side salad.
Please note that all restaurant and product names are used simply for referential purposes and links provided as a courtesy. Reviews are the sole opinions of the reviewer: no restaurant has paid to be listed here, and no restaurant is being explicitly endorsed. In other words, go out there, try them all, and form your own opinions!
We stopped at the northernmost road crossing of the the mighty James River, which empties 250 miles east of here into the Chesapeake Bay, reaching a width there at the mouth of over ten miles. At this end it's a mere ~150 feet wide, and just a mile north of here is where the James begins with the merging of the Jackson River and the Cowpasture River. For the curious, the Jackson begins at Lake Moomaw and runs south to Covington and then east through Low Moor and Clifton Forge before turning south to join the Cowpasture below Iron Gate.
