Day 4......

Day 4 started out with hubby and I venturing early to a tiny town called Valle Crucis, the home of the original Mast General Store, which has been in continuous operation since 1883. It has an old wood-burning stove as it's source of heat and we enjoyed the ambience of all the creaky floorboards and two floors of wooden shelves and old glass cases filled with all kinds of items......edible and otherwise. The town's post office is in that general store......and it is very old-fashioned and such fun to see. We mailed a post-card to the grandkids from there. Here are a few photos around and in the general store....

The front of the store.....Foggy mountain by the parking lot behind the store when we arrived early in the morning....
The back of the store....The old stove that still provides heat for the building....wonder how many of us have heating units that will continue to work for more than 100 years?? LOLLocals stop in each morning on a regular basis for coffee and to share gossip. An occasional game of checkers is played. Their gameboard uses bottle caps for the checkers.....of course, we were too late to catch any of them (having arrived about 8:45 and most had been there when the store opened at 7).We spent a fun couple of hours poking around in there....bought a few things (including some things for the housesitter/mail collector) and then got ready to drive to Tonya's house. For some reason, our GPS took us on a one-lane dirt road near Tonya's house and tried to tell us we were at our destination when we knew we weren't. I had to call and have TJ (Tonya's hubby) tell us how to proceed. We did as he directed and soon met up with them. They live in a very lovely area.....and their house is on the side of a mountain (as most things are in that area)!!! The 4 of us went to lunch at a nice Chinese buffet and I was reassured to know that they do have some nice touches of civilization not too far from them. LOL Tonya and I sat in the front of her red VW beetle with her driving and we had the guys ride in the back. We had a lot of laughs and I'm thinking, in retrospect, we were pretty noisy in the restaurant...but....we surely had a great time! We didn't really take any pictures....DUH.......except for one still that Tonya took of me using her GO! cutter....which is on her blog already and you can see it if you click HERE. (I wanted a Sunbonnet Sue and an Overall Sam and she has those dies and I don't.) She and I also made a video for our blogging friend, Gene......we wanted to sing and play a song for him, but we could never do it without falling into hysterics, so that video is not for "public consumption"....sorry about that!!! This one last photo is of some gifts Tonya gave to me......which was very sweet of her.....she gave me some thread, made me a fall dishtowel and got us 2 bottles of local wine AND gave us a jar of her delicious homemade pickles!!! YUM..........We discussed the very distinct possibility of Tonya, TJ, and E making a trip up our way soon (YAY!!!) and then....late that afternoon, we returned to our hotel in time for another manager's reception. Then we read a bit and watched some TV before calling it a night. Tomorrow I will tell about my trip to MaryJo's....a super-huge fabric store in Gastonia, NC.