Backyard adventures: Taking the slow road to historic site, hike

The original idea was to visit Mabry Mill, an old mill on the Blue Ridge Parkway in Meadows of Dan.

The site features restored woodworking and blacksmith shops, a whiskey still, and a restored log cabin, not to mention the mill itself, which the National Park Service says is the most photographed structure on the parkway. (The parkway’s poster child is featured on many a postcard.)

The mill still mills. You can buy things like stone-ground grits, cornmeal and buckwheat flour, although that’s milled off-site for sanitation reasons. And there’s a restaurant there run by concessionaire Forever Resorts that serves buckwheat cakes and Virginia ham, and is said to be a destination for locals, not just a tourist stop.

Mabry Mill is a reminder of the culture of early European settlers and their descendants, and the industry that helped keep them alive.

“People had to do everything for themselves,” said Gary Wood, general manager of Mabry Mill. If they wanted food and if they wanted clothing, they had to produce it.

The site offers self-guided tours you can take anytime and weekend demonstrations of milling, plus other demonstrations, such as weaving, seat caning and spinning, at different times of the year.

It was a lovely place to see. And there would have been all those demonstrations, except the mill hadn’t opened for the season when plans were laid for this excursion. Lucky for you, it opens April 26.

So that led to Plan B, a hike nearby at the Pinnacles of Dan. The Pinnacles are just that, cone-shaped mountains that rise more than 1,000 feet from the Dan River Gorge.

They loom above the river, which is dammed, with the water transported via aqueduct through the mountains to make power that is sold. The City of Danville Power & Light Co. owns the area, but lets the public use it for recreation.

There are actually two dams. The Townes Dam is the lower dam, the site for this hike. (There’s an upper dam, the Talbott Dam.)

The Townes Dam stands 240 feet high, which while small by Hoover standards is impressive nonetheless.

The lakes created by the dams are stocked with fish, and people can boat and fish there (but no hunting).

For hikers, there’s an old trail that leads to the pinnacles, which used to be part of the Appalachian Trail. It can be harder to find now, after being cut off from the trail.

There’s also a dirt road cut through the mountains, which can serve for hiking. A dirt road might sound sissy to seasoned hikers, but this one offered some pretty challenging grades that required periodic breath-catching stops.

You’ll need a visitor’s permit, though. Getting one is easy enough; you can stop by the stone house next to the gate and ask for one, or you can get one from Danville Power & Light.

The biggest kick of the trip was the Blue Ridge Parkway itself.

The parkway was built as a recreational road — an interesting concept in this harried and hurried world — along the crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains through Shenandoah National Park to the Great Smoky Mountains. The 469-mile parkway is meant to be driven slowly, hence speed limits that seem quaint compared with interstate travel.

The drive wound through gentle mountains. Spring had laced the woods with red bud bloom and the tender green of renewing life. Views from overlooks stretched over valleys with green-bordered fields and towns to more mountains in the distance.

It was worth the drive alone.

If you’re going

-- WHAT: Maybry Mill; Pinnacles of Dan
-- WHERE: Mabry Mill is at milepost 176.2 on the Blue Ridge Parkway, about one mile north of Meadows of Dan; The Pinnacles of Dan entrance to the Townes Dam is on Virginia 602.
-- WHEN: For Mabry Mill in spring, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. beginning April 26. For Pinnacles of Dan, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
-- INFO: For Mabry Mill, call (276) 952-2947. For Pinnacles of Dan, call (276) 251-5141.