Virginia Passage
Yesterday was the day of my first appointment with my new dentist located in Galax, VA. The announcement card was addressed 206 Washington Street. Not being that familiar with Galax, I used the Google map to locate the office. The map inquired of me if that was 206 West Washington or 206 East Washington. Well, it should have known the answer as the map clearly showed that East Washington is one block long and West Washington has two blocks. Stupid computers. Duh!
Anyhow, the visit for dental hygiene was routine and pleasant. As is typically the case, a dentist checks your teeth after the hygienist has finished their torture to you teeth and gums that you pay them perfectly good money to perform. Now, there are three dentists in this office and one of them only does the post-cleaning check. He was the one, you see, who started the practice there in 1951. If you do the math that has him pushing 80!
My plan for the day was to end it in Cary and, being on US-58 in Galax, I decided to follow it through Virgina to Danville and then down VA/NC-86 to Chapel Hill where I would then take I-40 to Cary.
Now, US-58 is a pastoral highway, passing through (or by) Hillsville, Meadows-of-Dan, Spencer, Stuart and Martinsville before arriving in Danville.
Here's the view from Lover's Leap in the Blue Ridge Mountain of Virginia. What a spectacular sight on a fall day. Lover's Leap is a rock above a hillside that goes straight down. A surveillance camera keeps an eye on the rock, located miles and miles from any civilization. I suppose it's to give the lover's families a final look what results when they "done them wrong" by having not giving their blessings to the romance.
It is unfortunate for those in no particular hurry that these highways now bypass every town of any size. Had I not driven into Stuart I would have missed the statue of J.E.B. Stuart on the courthouse square.
I'd never been to Stuart and found it to be a beautiful little town.
I was determined to also visit Martinsville and did so. However, I must have zigged when I should had zagged for I soon found myself on the road to Chatham, a town I knew to be well north of Danville. With a backtrack of a few blocks and a left turn, however, I was soon on my way to Main Street and the old road to Danville.
I sought out my favorite hamburger stand in Danville, but, alas, it was ten years gone. Instead I found the Danville branch of Short Sugars nearby and had a barbecue sandwich. Nice pit out back, but I fear that they now cook in an gas rigamarole. I asked the manager how long they had been in their new location and he said they had always been there on Riverside Drive. I informed him that Short Sugars was on South Main Street in the 1970's when we lived there. Turns out it moved 20 years ago and is no longer associated with the original Short Sugar's in Reidsville. Bummer.
OK, Wawa and Thriller, here is the hospital in which you were born. The delivery room was somewhere there above where the car is parked. It was, and still is, an ugly hospital, now with a number of even uglier new appendages.
Here is the first house the CFO and I bought for $44K. The house and neighborhood have both been well kept.
These are the trees I transplanted from across the street as saplings in 1974. Kinda ages me, doesn't it? Oh well.
On NC-86 I passed through the historic town of Hillsboro where one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence lived and where six Regulators where hung, their bowels cut out and burned before their dying eyes, their heads chopped off and their bodies drawn and quartered, as was the custom, for benefit of the King. And, now some folks get a bee in their bonnet about whether the condemned feel any pain as the lethal injection takes effect!
Between Hillsboro and Chapel Hill I passed Allen & Son Barbecue but it was Monday and they were closed. Bummer. It's one of my Top 10 barbecue joints.
Anyhow, the visit for dental hygiene was routine and pleasant. As is typically the case, a dentist checks your teeth after the hygienist has finished their torture to you teeth and gums that you pay them perfectly good money to perform. Now, there are three dentists in this office and one of them only does the post-cleaning check. He was the one, you see, who started the practice there in 1951. If you do the math that has him pushing 80!
My plan for the day was to end it in Cary and, being on US-58 in Galax, I decided to follow it through Virgina to Danville and then down VA/NC-86 to Chapel Hill where I would then take I-40 to Cary.
Now, US-58 is a pastoral highway, passing through (or by) Hillsville, Meadows-of-Dan, Spencer, Stuart and Martinsville before arriving in Danville.
Here's the view from Lover's Leap in the Blue Ridge Mountain of Virginia. What a spectacular sight on a fall day. Lover's Leap is a rock above a hillside that goes straight down. A surveillance camera keeps an eye on the rock, located miles and miles from any civilization. I suppose it's to give the lover's families a final look what results when they "done them wrong" by having not giving their blessings to the romance.
It is unfortunate for those in no particular hurry that these highways now bypass every town of any size. Had I not driven into Stuart I would have missed the statue of J.E.B. Stuart on the courthouse square.
I'd never been to Stuart and found it to be a beautiful little town.
I was determined to also visit Martinsville and did so. However, I must have zigged when I should had zagged for I soon found myself on the road to Chatham, a town I knew to be well north of Danville. With a backtrack of a few blocks and a left turn, however, I was soon on my way to Main Street and the old road to Danville.
I sought out my favorite hamburger stand in Danville, but, alas, it was ten years gone. Instead I found the Danville branch of Short Sugars nearby and had a barbecue sandwich. Nice pit out back, but I fear that they now cook in an gas rigamarole. I asked the manager how long they had been in their new location and he said they had always been there on Riverside Drive. I informed him that Short Sugars was on South Main Street in the 1970's when we lived there. Turns out it moved 20 years ago and is no longer associated with the original Short Sugar's in Reidsville. Bummer.
OK, Wawa and Thriller, here is the hospital in which you were born. The delivery room was somewhere there above where the car is parked. It was, and still is, an ugly hospital, now with a number of even uglier new appendages.
Here is the first house the CFO and I bought for $44K. The house and neighborhood have both been well kept.
These are the trees I transplanted from across the street as saplings in 1974. Kinda ages me, doesn't it? Oh well.
On NC-86 I passed through the historic town of Hillsboro where one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence lived and where six Regulators where hung, their bowels cut out and burned before their dying eyes, their heads chopped off and their bodies drawn and quartered, as was the custom, for benefit of the King. And, now some folks get a bee in their bonnet about whether the condemned feel any pain as the lethal injection takes effect!
Between Hillsboro and Chapel Hill I passed Allen & Son Barbecue but it was Monday and they were closed. Bummer. It's one of my Top 10 barbecue joints.
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