Road Trip to Athens, Georgia – Part 2 The Road to Roanoke

My goal for this trip was to avoid fast food and dumb hotels. Road food was okay, so long as it was truly local, but no chains. The hotel could be part of a chain, but had to have some individuality to it, and could not have those dumb hangers or the lights and TV bolted down, or serve little white powdered donuts for continental breakfast in the lobby. Was I asking too much?

We started our trip in Philadelphia, having spent two days there with Mr TBTAM’s family for Passover. Thus, time for our first road meal came as we were heading west on the Pa turnpike toward Rte 81 south. The junction of these two routes is Carlisle, Pa, and that was where we decided to stop for lunch.

Carlisle, Pa

Carlisle is home to Dickenson College, and like all of the cities we encoutered on this trip, clearly in a revival fed mostly by the arts community. We found antique shops and galleries and had quite a choice of places to eat, finally settling on La Luz, a gallery-coffee shop-cafe. A group of students and their teacher sat nearby on sofas and chairs holding a Spanish reading class, and folks everywhere were using their laptops and taking advantage of the free WiFi. Though nothing terribly special, the food was just fine, and we had salads and soups.

Afterwards, we stopped in at The Carlisle Arts Learning Center, a huge, light-filled community studio, to see their latest student exhibit. The potter’s wheels were inviting, and we would have loved to have stayed and taken a pottery class, but we had places to go and things to do…

So it was back to the road, feeling like we’d not only avoided the road food, but found a funky little town to stop at again next year. Did I mention that this trip south is becoming our annual spring pilgrimage?

Route 81

For those making a similar pilgrimage, the big question is – Rte 81 (and the trucks) or the Skyline Drive-BlueRidge Parkway? We opted for 81 for the north part of our trip, hoping to take advantage of the earlier spring farther down south for the Parkway.

Despite our choice, Rte 81 was a picturesque way to go. We passed trucks filled with chickens and horses, and I was heartened by the many thousands of cows we saw along the way, cows that were grazing on green grass and not being fed processed dead animal, antibiotic-laden feed.
Roanoke, Va.

We spent the night in another up and coming funky little town, Roanoke, Virginia, where I had scored a great web deal at the landmark Hotel Roanoke.

This Tudor-style giant hotel, which looks pretty much like it used to up there, sits high up on a hill, linked right to the downtown by a covered footbridge. The hotel was everything we wanted, except that the outdoor pool was still closed for the season. Don’t you love the lobby?

Downtown Roanoke is a wonderful mix of the old and new and has a great small town feel. Our girls wanted us to move there. In fact, we met quite a few ex-New Yorkers who have settled there, drawn to the growing arts scene, low cost of living and great old buildings. A new art museum is going up next to the train tracks, testimony to the permanence of the transition.

We had a great dinner at Tong’s Thai, located on Salem Street in a wonderful old building. My Thai beef slad was perfect. It was a quiet night, so the owner hung out at our table and chatted, and brought us samples of curries and appetizers on the house. He had come to Roanoke from Thiland via Queens, so we had lots to talk about.

After dinner, we wandered around a bit, though most of the stores were closed. We did stumble upon a local theater that was having a reception following the opening of a play, so we crashed the party for a while evesdropping on the locals, snarfing up some free drinks, and even getting a free baseball cap!

Next we found a painting class going on at the nearby gallery, and the owner invited us in to observe the class and check out the gallery even though it was past closing time. Turns out she was from (where else) New York!

Then it was back to our room in time to catch “24” (Thanks, Linda, we are all addicted)

An early start next day led us downtown for breakfast at Ernie’s, a real local’s place serving typical southern breakfasts on paper plates with lots of grease. Don’t look for great food here, just good Southern atmosphere (and great accents).

Roanoke has a daily downtown farmer’s market, which was just getting started for the day…

and I picked up some fresh herb plants to bring to Joe for his garden.

There were lots of cute shops selling clothes we girls loved…

a Food Court in the old City Market Building, once home to meatcutter’s stalls.

Not expecting to enjoy Roanoke as much as we did, we were disappointed to have had such a short stay. But we needed to move on, so we left Roanoke mid-morning, vowing to return again next year for a longer stay.

Next up: The Blue Ridge Parkway