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Dining

Two inns in town also serve meals to the public: The Highland Inn (tel. 540-468-2143) serves dinner Wednesday through Saturday and Sunday brunch, and the Mountain Laurel Inn (tel. 540-468-3401) serves soup and sandwiches for lunch.

You can’t miss the Maple Restaurant on Spruce Street. There’s a big fish on the roof, no doubt because rainbow trout from the hatchery up the road is one of the house specialties. Dinners are usually less than $10 and come with two vegetables and homemade bread. They also serve country ham and homemade baked goodies. This is country food, inexpensive, where it’s been served for more than 35 years. (tel. 540-468-2684)

Information

Highland County Chamber of Commerce, Highland Center, Spruce Street, tel. 540-468-2550, www.highlandcounty.org. The office is open Monday-Friday, 10 am-5 pm, but there’s a brochure rack outside if you visit when the office is closed.

Events

In addition to the Highland Maple Festival the second and third weekends in March, the Mountain Mama Road Bike Challenge and the County Fair are in August, Hands & Harvest Fall Foliage Festival is in mid-October, and Wintertide is the first weekend in December. Two events alternate years: the House & Garden Weekend is held on “even” years in mid-July, and the McDowell Battlefield Days are held in May on “odd” years at the site of one of Stonewall Jackson’s victories in the Valley Campaign of 1862. (tel. 540-468-2550, www.highlandcounty.org)

Trip Journal: Blue Grass

I’m guessing a lot of people have a moment where, after they discover some small town somewhere, they fantasize about chucking it all and moving there to raise sheep and grow herbs. For Bill, it’s Troutdale, Virginia, where author Sherwood Anderson retired. For me, it’s Blue Grass.

We found it purely by accident, driving in from the backside while “bushwhacking” off the mountain from Laurel Fork Wilderness after a weekend of hiking. We were trying to avoid driving the long way back home – the main route had us going west into West Virginia, around, then finally east on Route 250. With trusty gazetteer in hand, we had spied a back roads way off the mountain, although it meant taking some dotted lines. (You can only do this sort of thing with four-wheel-drive.)

As we drove down into the valley, blue with typical Virginia August haze, it seemed as if God Himself had planted it there. After the rugged terrain of Laurel Fork, the valley was like an oasis, soothing to the eyes, the mind, and even the sores muscles. Rolling pastures were dotted with black cows and bounded by split rail fence. It may have been the hunger and fatigue, but I felt we could just pull into any one of the dirt driveways and move in. A hay wagon filled with the whole family was pulled to the side of the road, the driver talking and laughing with someone who had pulled over in a pick-up.

Then a small white sign finally told us the name of this oasis: “Blue Grass.” We blinked and almost missed it, but eventually we came to the “town,” a row of white storefronts, perhaps a block long. I wolfed down a bag of chips and a cold Route 66 root beer from the Country Convenience store. Junk food never tastes so good as after a weekend of trail mix and exertion.

I found out later that Blue Grass was the shopping center of the county before WW II, with a jeweler, a cinema, and the largest mercantile in the county where you could buy the latest in home appliances – washing machines and radios.

To get to Blue Grass, go north from Monterey on US 220 about six miles. The Ginseng Mountain Store on the way is a great stop, as is the Virginia Trout Company. Turn left on Route 642 and follow the South Branch of the Potomac for about two and half miles to the village. There are no places to stay or eat in Blue Grass, which may be a good thing. Maybe it will remain just as it is until we can buy a farm and move in.

TRIVIA: The 1921 silent film Tol’able David was filmed in the Blue Grass Valley and is shown throughout Monterey’s Maple Festival in March.