A Quick Jaunt Through Virginia

Pretty 

Picturesque

Prosperous

Unlike poor West Virginia, on which more later. Watch this space.

Asheville, The Weird and the Wonderful

 Along the edge of the Great Smoky Mountains, with patches of mist rising and a darkening sky. The morning had been cold and rainy.

 Asheville, North Carolina is the home of Biltmore, which I believe is the largest stately home in America, home of the Vanderbilts. We were not going to visit Biltmore as it costs 50 dollars to get in and several days to stagger around. A couple of years ago, we'd swung by the grand entrance, where a gloomy-looking fake Victorian village had sprung up, complete with outrageously expensive shoppes. This time we were going to look at downtown. And as we quickly discovered, Asheville is also home to ageing hippies, new age quackery and throwbacks to the 1970s.

Much of it also outrageously expensive. This sculpture was quite striking though.

It didn't help that it was freezing cold. We took refuge in a restored old building that's been turned into a shopping mall, where you can pay through the nose for ornaments and other knicknacks you could probably make yourself.

Not to mention a tie-dye shirt or two.  Brings back memories, that.

But to be fair, Asheville has two good points. One is a shop called "Chocolate Fetish", which is the sort of place you really should keep well away from during Lent. You know, serried ranks of hand made chocolate-covered salted caramels and all that stuff. Sis-in-law bought a bunch of chocolate spaghetti and there were some very superior chocolate bunnies.
  And the second good point was this:

A truly stunning church, called the Basilica of St Lawrence (no relation). Built in 1905, it was designed by a Spanish architect, Rafael Guastavino, who is now entombed there.

It's lovely because it's just ornate enough and not too kitschy.

The carved statues on the altar date from the 17th century - presumably brought from Spain.

One ornate touch was the marble font..

 Which stood out against the largely simple interior. It was good to see signs asking for reverent silence. I wish a few more churches had those.

Outside, there was a view over the mountains. (Well take my word for it.)

Strange to find such poignant splendour among all the hippy fakery but on these road trips you never know what you're going to see. Which is what makes them fun.

Peanuts and Pecans

Driving on through Georgia we passed endless pecan orchards. The nut trees taller than you'd imagine a nut treeever  ought to be, all in perfect rows and stretching for miles. We also passed quite near Plains which, oldies will remember, was the home of President Jimmy Carter, who was known principally in Britain as a peanut farmer. 

  "I've got to buy some pecans before we leave Georgia", said sister-in-law and,  as luck would have it, just before we crossed the border, there was a sign and what turned out to be a splendid farm market. But what was the first thing we saw?

Oh no! Those boiled beanuts again. Here they are, sizzling away.

We gave them a wide berth.

Other items might have proved tricky to transport.

Or a little too tempting.

But we stocked up with fruit and frog jam and scuppernong relish and Georgia moonshine jelly, mud pies and "hotter than hot" sauce and other esoteric delicacies of the South.
.

And of course there were sacks and sacks of nuts.

Except for One Thing

The azaleas at the biker village were just glorious. That's one of the nice things about a spring road trip north from Florida; you drive through the seasons. Bougainvillea in Florida, azaleas in Georgia, daffodils in North Carolina, Forsythia and cherry blossom in West Virginia.... and nothing in Western New York.

Warm Springs Cold Shower

  Now you can have an image of  a place before you see it. Somehow I imagined Warm Springs in Georgia to be  a sweet little spa town - something like a miniature Bath, perhaps. It is, after all, the site of President Franklin Roosevelt's Little White House, where he went for treatments for polio and he surely  had enough dosh to be discriminating. Well, either the quality of the waters made up for everything else, or it's changed out of all recognition.  There is still a spa but it's part of a rehabilitation centre and you can't get to it. Which, I suppose is fair enough. 

    And it did start quite promisingly with a Victorian tea room ...

...and some gift shoppes, housed in olde buildings.

All very cutesy. All very samey and all very pricey. I liked this sign, though.

 Then I went for a little wander, upon which things went rapidly downhill.

  All right, it might be OK for people who like boiled peanuts or have never tasted them. I did once and once was enough. These abominations masquerading under the name of food are the South's very special revenge on unsuspecting Yankees and Britishers. No offence to the ones in the photo, as I didn't try them. Well, to be correct, there were no actual boiled peanuts on the stall and the stallholder had long gone.
  Further along, I came upon the remains of an old, rusty train.

Which turned out to be another shoppe. A closed one. In fact the entire place was deserted and a cold, rainy wind added to the atmosphere.

Then I got a clue as to what this was all about.

Warm Springs is now Motorbike Heaven.

And this dingy courtyard is apparently where the bikers congregate when they're in town. But they weren't in town. No one was in town but us.

I'm not sure what the bunny's for but some of the wackanalia would have been amusing if it wasn't all so damp and gloomy.

 I suppose it was the wrong time of year to visit. I expect when the bikers are all there, it's a rather exciting place and I have nothing, personally against bikers but as for sister-in-law and me, we couldn't wait to get out of there.

The Red Earth of Georgia

 To devotees of "Gone With the Wind", that will be a familiar line.

And it is indeed red. Lanes like these stretch for miles through the forests. Another characteristic of country roads in Georgia - we always seem to see dogs running out into the road. Only in Georgia. Funny, that.

And On Into Georgia

And a lovely little town called Thomasville.

Another of those American places with rather English-looking buildings.

Courtyards and alleys.

Ornate little houses.

And bigger houses.

Classical architecture

And even bigger houses.

Quaint, flat-fronted shops

And one of our last chances to see flowers before we headed back to winter.

There were some odd little shops. Here, a tobacconists.

With the obligatory Native American.

We looked in the window and take my word for it, the stuffed deer were, as the Americans say, awesome.

This perfect, scented blossoming tree graced a public building.

I am still trying to find out what it was.

This being Georgia, many of the shops were decorated with wreaths of cotton puffs

Restaurants offered southern dishes.

Children's boutiques had quaint Easter displays.

We met the South's most patient dog.

And speaking of decadence.......

There was only one problem. It was Sunday and the only thing open in the whole town was a Chinese restaurant. We had to be content with window-shopping. This is the Bible belt after all. And good on 'em.