Today Peg and I got to return to the Blue Ridge Parkway, which may be one of the best roads for sightseeing in the whole world. We started out the day buying diesel in Rustburg, VA, which we don’t seem to be able to call anything other than Rustbucket. It is actually a nice little town. We got on VA-24 which took us west to the outskirts of Roanoke where we turned northeast on the Parkway. The trip on VA-24 from Rustburg to Roanoke is a spectacular drive through hardwood forests, giant meadows with knee-deep grass and tidy farmhouses and barns before you get to the Parkway. Once on the Parkway, as has been the case every other time we have been on this road, the scenery was stunning and to make things better, the skies were very clear. From the higher elevations of the Parkway, you can gaze north out over the Great Valley which is a depression between the Blue Ridge and the Appalachians extending from New York to North Carolina. Looking south, you can look down over rolling hills that seem to extend all the way to Richmond. This part of Virginia is breathtakingly beautiful and I can heartily recommend at least some time on the Blue Ridge Parkway and in surrounding areas.
We left the Blue Ridge Parkway and turned southeast on County 130 to VA-29 south where we ran across a place called Jed’s Fried Chicken and, seeing as the owner shares my name, we purchased some fried chicken and baked beans, both of which turned out to be extremely tasty. We also took a spin through the town of Lynchburg where we observed a great variety of beautiful antebellum houses, big masonry churches and some very old rather large classic brick buildings in town. Lynchburg is laid out downtown in such a way that the numbered streets all run up & down very steep streets. Probably because they are so steep, some of the former streets have been converted to walks and stairs leading from the residential part of town at the top of the town down to the lower commercial part of town on the James River. Some parts of the town look abandoned but the buildings are still pretty neat.
From Lynchburg we went back to Rustbucket where we stocked up on groceries at the local Food Lion before heading back to the Barbarian Invader for drinks.