This is a blog of my five-week exploration of culinary experiences in North Carolina. Baaswell Sheep is accompanying me and offering his own commentary on the trip, although he refuses to go into any place that serves lamb chops.
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As the saying goes, all good things must come to an end, and so it is with our time in North Carolina. Today we head south and return to Georgia, but we're not going home just yet. We'll be spending three nights in the scenic town of Blue Ridge to decompress and re-acclimate ourselves to the hotter Georgia weather before our return to the metro Atlanta area on Wednesday.
It seems we couldn't get out of Franklin without one more small run-around. We went down the road to a Bojangles, but found the drive-thru line wrapped around the building. As that Haywood Smokehouse was in the same shopping center, we got around the line and over there, only to find that they're not open on Sundays. So, we went back to the Bojangles and prepared to wait rather than keep running around looking for anything better. The store was relatively new and clean, but they definitely could have used an extra worker or two. I kind of felt sorry for them, and we did our best to be patient. My companion got a bacon-egg-and-cheese biscuit and said it was very good, I enjoyed an order of two Boberry Biscuits (blueberry infused biscuits with a frosting sauce poured over them), and we shared our last fountain Cheerwine for a while.
Downtown Murphy, N.C.
Our last stop in North Carolina was the town of Murphy, which has a small but pleasant looking downtown and a decent number of active shops. However, it gets one strike against it, as the visitor's center was not open on Sundays, so we followed "Public Restrooms" signs around the block to what appeared to be the back side of that building, only to find the door locked. But, we went around some more and decided to visit the Murphy Art Center (AKA the MAC) and fortunately they had a restroom we could use, and plenty of local arts and crafts to look over. My companion hoped to find something interesting to buy, but the only things that interested him were well beyond the limits of his budget.
Our first stop back in Georgia was a place we'd heard about a few years ago but had never gotten around to visiting. This place has those sheet metal animal figures that you see in other rural outdoor art places, only they have more than we've ever seen anywhere else. Just about every common animal imaginable, including dinosaurs, dragons, unicorns, Sasquatches, gnomes, and other oddities. (Our understanding of these things is that they're made by artisans in Mexico using old signs and other similar items, which they cut and reshape into these animal figures, then paint to complete the effect.) My companion has a red fox in this style, and looked around for an opossum, but all they had were mean looking opossums with black bodies, which was not what he wanted. It's interesting that they had a lot of rather large figures, more than a few with four digit prices, and most of those big ones looked like they'd been sitting out in the weather for a decade or more, leading one to wonder if anyone ever actually buys the big ones. It also makes you wonder how much money the owner(s) have put into that place – quite a bit, even if you assume a fifty percent markup built into the prices.
We may be back in our home state, but we wanted to end the day in style, so we went to Harvest on Main, a farm to table restaurant in the heart of Blue Ridge. To my joy we got a vegetarian meal of a farm salad and a side of creamy macaroni and cheese. The food was delicious, but both items were much bigger than we imagined, and even between the two of us we couldn't finish it all. Not a bad way to end the day, especially after the headaches of the previous few days.
Please note that all restaurant and product names are used simply for referential purposes and links provided as a courtesy. Reviews are the sole opinions of the reviewer: no restaurant has paid to be listed here, and no restaurant is being explicitly endorsed. In other words, go out there, try them all, and form your own opinions!
It seems we couldn't get out of Franklin without one more small run-around. We went down the road to a Bojangles, but found the drive-thru line wrapped around the building. As that Haywood Smokehouse was in the same shopping center, we got around the line and over there, only to find that they're not open on Sundays. So, we went back to the Bojangles and prepared to wait rather than keep running around looking for anything better. The store was relatively new and clean, but they definitely could have used an extra worker or two. I kind of felt sorry for them, and we did our best to be patient. My companion got a bacon-egg-and-cheese biscuit and said it was very good, I enjoyed an order of two Boberry Biscuits (blueberry infused biscuits with a frosting sauce poured over them), and we shared our last fountain Cheerwine for a while.
