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 was a down day for us: a day of recovery after all of those wonderful Shenandoah mountain hikes over the past five days. Let's just say our feet and hooves were worn out and achy, as were our backs. On top of that, we discovered this morning that a canned soda had burst in our cooler bag, making quite a mess, and we had a tire on the van that needed attention pretty quickly. We had no luck with the tire, as the one nearby tire shop was full up when we got there around noon, but we visited the nearby Target store and bought a nice new hard-sided cooler and a cooler backpack for our food supply. That takes care of a bad drink soaking all of our food containers and packaging. The Target was connected to the local mall, so we walked around inside at a very leisurely pace and found a visitor's center with brocures, and learned about an interesting place that we decided to go visit as a way to fill the afternoon.
Located on US 11 on the southern edge of Harrisonburg, this place at first glance looks like it might be an antique mall, but its much more than that. It's a large warehouse-style building divided into a number of large shops. One of them is an antique mall, but there's also a general store selling breads, sweets, cheeses and meats, a couple of home decor shops, a bookstore, a toy store, and a kitchenwares store. We browsed around for a good couple of hours at least, bought a few trinkets, and even got some nice pictures of the koi in the pond out front.
Having had a light lunch at a Honey Baked Ham, we treated ourselves at the nearby Texas Roadhouse, my companion enjoying their pork chop while I dined on some of the salad and baked sweet potatoe with butter, cinnamon, and marshmallows. Absolutely delicious!
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!
All original content ©2025 Kevin Pittman and may not be reused without permission