Chimney Rock and a Folk Art Center

    Our day started well with a timely UPS delivery of the part to replace our broken side mirror.  We drove the camper next door to the truck repair shop and they promised to get the job done in a few hours.  Yeah!  With those encouraging words we decided to go back to a stop that we missed on the Blue Ridge Parkway - the Folk Art Center which is home to the Southern Highland Craft Guild.  This guild is one of the strongest in the country and represents craftspeople from 9 southern states.  During the Depression the guild  helped craftspeople in the Appalachian region market their remarkable creations.
   The center is housed in a beautiful building that showcases the best of artists in many materials including  fabric, glass, wood, metals, clay, stone, and fibers.  There were hundreds of items for sale, demonstrations on some of the traditional Appalachian crafts, and a museum display of some of the best of the items.  I was really impressed by the quilted and woven fabric art, the beautiful baskets and many of the pottery pieces.  However, I think we spent our mad money this trip on our new mirror.  Shucks.
   We left the center with more time to burn.  Rick heard from one of our neighbors at the campground that a state park nearby had a great view.  We found it on the map and headed for Chimney Rock State Park.  As so often happens in this area, the road looked straight on the map but was full of steep hills and sharp turns.  We had the little car today, again, so we were soon in the small town at the bottom of the hill leading to the park.  It was time for lunch so we stopped at the busiest restaurant on the street - Genny's Cafe.  It didn't look like much from the front, but had a porch on the back which overlooked a rushing mountain river.  Good Southern food and a great view - what a nice "last" lunch before we hit the road for home.
    The drive into the park was again narrow, winding and steep.  At the top we parked the car, walked through a 180' tunnel to an elevator, and took the elevator to the top of the mountain.  A wooden walkway took us out to the "chimney" rock which was a tall pillar of stone standing high above the valley.  What an amazing view!
    We figured our camper must be done so we headed back down the steep roads and picked up our baby from the truck hospital.  Now we have our course plotted for returning back to our family.  The weather is supposed to turn very cool in the next few days so it is definitely time to head home and put the camper into storage.  It has been wonderful to capture an extra month of summer here in the South.