Today was a nice fall day for Ireland – cool with varying levels of moist. The roads are also reminiscent of the most scenic parts of Ireland – narrow and twisty with aspirational speed limits even the locals can’t reach. The only thing missing are the stone walls at the edge of the road.
Undeterred we hiked the Appalachian Trail. A tiny portion of it anyway, from Carver’s Gap and it’s all important parking, along the Tennessee/North Carolina border, over Round Bald to Joan’s Bald and back. As is our wont we had our lunch at a scenic spot on the trail, today supplemented with a few wild blueberries growing nearby.
Then it was off to downtown Bakersville, both blocks of it. The art galleries were open and little else, and after just one we had reached our limit, although we had a nice chat with Jennifer who moved here from Tampa a couple of years ago. The longest she’s been snowed in is three or four days which she didn’t think was too bad since the whole area kind of shuts down in the winter anyway.
Apparently people around here don’t eat out on Sundays as most of the restaurants were closed (not that there are that many to begin with). We called one possibility that doesn’t have an internet presence of any sort and got no answer, which left a single restaurant in Bakersville – after yesterday’s long drive we were trying to minimize our time in the car. When we pulled up in front we could see the hand lettered signs telling us they were out of business. So we put plan B into effect and headed off to the larger town of Spruce Pine (well, which one is it?) where it was deja Vu all over again. Our primary target was closed, so we began wandering around between Oak and Locust streets trying to find a place to eat. We found El Ranchero open so no need to resort to cannibalism or our emergency almonds. Whew.
