Day Four - Roanoke, Virginia to Highlands, North Carolina (368 miles)
With the presence of rain all around we jumped up on the Blue Ridge Parkway. This road is probably a little better than Skyline Drive. A little more twisting, and higher altitude. I speak from previous experience, because on this day we could barely see five feet in front of us. Our first really bad weather in four years of trips. As we limped down the road, we decided to get off into lower altitudes and check out Mt. Airy, NC. This is where Andy Griffith is from, and his show is loosely based on this town. The town has a cottage industry of Mayberry memorabilia. We saw Floyd's barber shop, and ate at the Snappy Lunch. The rain situation was much better here so we decided to go back up to the Parkway. We raced down I-77, headed west on U.S. 421. At Deep Gap we got back on. Shortly afterwards we got rain again. Just before Ashville the rain stopped, and we packed away our rain gear for the day. As we got close to the end of the Parkway we exited onto U.S. 276 for a short while before we headed west on U.S. 64. Going west on U.S. 64 we began hitting allot of what looked to be summer homes. U.S. 64 provided nice scenery with well conditioned roads. As it started to get late we came into the town of Highlands, NC. A nice looking older motel with a good looking restaurant across the street hooked us. After we made accommodations we walked across the street to eat. When we ordered we were told they could not sell beer. Before we panicked too much we convinced the waitress to let us bring in our own. All restaurants should be like this.
