Current Location: Honey Bear Campground, Boone, North Carolina

This morning we got up a little late (8:30 or so) and headed over to the home of Val’s aunt and uncle. They fed us breakfast, we sat around and talked for a bit, then we piled into their car to do some sightseeing. We stopped at the original Mast General Store in Valle Crucis, North Carolina (just down the road from Boone).

The original Mast General Store.

It was a really neat store. There were all kinds of things for sale there. The original building didn’t have a level floor anywhere inside, a testament to its age. It was a lot of fun wandering the aisles of merchandise.

The toy aisle.

The Valle Crucis post office is located in the building, as well. A sign on the post office boxes warns that it is a working post office and tourists shouldn’t try to open the post office boxes.

Valle Crucis post office in the store.

After doing some shopping at Mast General Store, and the nearby local crafts store, we headed to lunch at Cracker Barrel. After lunch, we went over to the Blue Ridge Parkway, drove on it a couple miles and visited the Moses H. Cone Memorial Park.

Sign at the Cone park.

The views from in front of the house were outstanding. Fortunately, a day that started out cold and drizzly had turned warm and sunny by the time we got here. Malcolm took this panoramic picture of the house. We’re going to see how it looks posted in the blog:

Panoramic view of Cone house.

After our sightseeing, we went back to Val’s aunt’s and uncle’s house and had pizza for dinner. We visited with Val’s cousin for a while and sat around and chatted into the evening until we needed to get back to the trailer to prepare to head out in the morning. Tomorrow, we’re heading to the Durham, NC area to visit Malcolm’s cousin, then on to Virginia Beach.