holidays

Breakfast of grits and cheese and bacon at the Blue Ridge Restaurant round the corner form the Hotel Floyd was followed by a drive through a picturesque countryside of wooded hills and meadows and creeks and neat homesteads and eventually up a dirt track to a small parking lot on Buffalo Mountain. We walked up a steep trail to the summit. Timber rattlesnakes, bears, and a kind of mealy bug found nowhere else on earth were apparently present, but we didn’t see any of them. We did get spectacular views when we arrived, sweating and breathless, at the top.

We had to drive fast round the winding roads to make it to the Chateau Morisette winery in time for lunch – we got there only just before 2pm. Lunch and local wine were good, and worth the haste.

We checked into a motel a mile down the road from Floyd, and in the evening we went into Floyd for the Friday night music. We got there about 5.30, and there were musicians gathering, and a banjo player was warming up near the public restrooms. Another good dinner at Oddfellas, and then we went to the Country Store for the Jamboree. $4 got us entry.

They’d moved all the shop displays and set out rows of chairs facing a dance floor and the stage at the back of the store. At 6:30 we listened to Janet Turner and Friends do an hour of gospel songs, then two bluegrass bands – County Connections and the Hans Creek Band – played for dancing until the store closed, around 10:30. The place was packed, and as soon as the first dance band struck up the floor was full of dancers doing various forms of flat-footing with and without tap shoes. A few square dances were called. We joined in.
Outside in the street various sessions were gong on, people sheltering from the rain showers under cover by the music shop. If it hadn’t have been raining there would have been more outside – there were chairs set out, and even brick-built alcoves along main street set up specially for musicians