Abingdon Road Trip

The Appalachian Authors Guild, headquartered in Abingdon, had invited me to be their guest speaker at their meeting on Tuesday. I knew several of the members, having met some at their wonderful Heritage Writers Symposium last June.

Since I hate to drive on I-81, I invited my friend Ibby Greer to pilot my PT Cruiser to the meeting, which was about two and a half hours from us. Tuesday was the perfect day for a literary road trip. Besides attending the meeting, we poked around Abingdon and Wytheville.

We stopped in downtown Abingdon to see the sights. Here's one, an interesting sculpture in the parking lot next to the Martha  Washington Inn.

Near the sculpture was this sign about the Crooked Road, which begins in our neighborhood back in Franklin County.

This sign was in front of the Martha Washington Inn. Was there a love-in at the inn? If so, we missed it.

As a lover of gazebos, I liked this one on the inn's lawn.

I took a picture of myself in the inn's very elegant ladies' room.

Across the street from the inn, was an interesting fountain (you can see the Barter Theatre in the background).

It's such a big fountain, I couldn't look at it all at once. It had some animals around the bottom, like these little foxes . . .

. . . and this bunny . . .

. . . and a turtle and some fairies. . . 

. . . and someone holding a comedy mask.

A nearby sign identified the fountain. One of the creators was Charles Vess, who designed the Jack Tale brick wall at Southwest Virginia Community College. I'd blogged about that wall last year when I was a presenter at last year's Appalachian Heritage Writers Symposium.

 Next we stopped briefly at Heartwood, one of my favorite places. I wanted to see if they still had any copies of my books in their Appalachian Author section.

They did! But not as many as the last time I was there. They had a copy of The Girl Who Raced Mules, two copies of Where's There's a Will, and several copies of Ferradiddledumday.

They also had a display of Nell Fredericksen's jewelry.

Here's a closer look.

After Heartwood, we headed for the Tuscan Italian Grill where about twenty members of the AWG heard me read and speak. They were a great audience! 

On our way home after the meeting, we stopped in Wytheville and made a pilgrimage to the big pencil.

Across the street was a picture of a big paper clip.

All in all, it was a good trip for a couple of writers to make.

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