It seems that our tradition has been to spend Marisa’s birthday in Boone. Her favorite restaurant is Twig’s in Blowing Rock. It is certainly a great choice for a special occasion. Twig’s charming twig covered arbor beckons you into the cozy restaurant with a charming mountain decor. The twinkling white lights through the restaurant gives it that festive flair that keeps us coming back.
The fare is always a contemporary touch and interesting twist on some classic dishes. One of my favorites is their house speicalty: Crab Cakes with nantua butter. Michael is in love with their New Zealand Lamb Chops with mango chutney. Mady, who has been a vegetarian for 5 years has recently decided to be a carnivore again. She embraced it with gusto and devoured her NY Strip with cabernet portobello sauce. Goo and Evan both had the Yellowfin Tuna.
Happy Birthday my sweet Goo
Our rental agent has hit strike 3 and the game is over!
She rented our cabin out for a party. The place was trashed and the hot tub was vandalized. She tried to take no responsibility and claimed it was normal wear and tear. For the tenants to leave the cabin full of party trash and food everywhere, and the hot tub to be left opened with food and trash in it, is utterly unacceptable. All the trash in the hot tub got into the motor and caused the motor to seize and the mother board to burn out! A repair of $2000!
When Jennifer arrived to clean, there were streamers and balloons still TAPED to the walls. Removing the tape also removed paint from the walls. This kind of thing makes you lose faith in people.
We can only wonder how many other times something like this has happened, but the rental agent’s cleaner did not report it, or at least the agent didnt report it to us!
We will be renting the cabin ourselves. We have learned from a number of neighbors and folks we have met in Boone that the experience of renting it themselves has been very rewarding. They all say that they get to know the people who rent the cabin and even form long lasting friendships and relationships with some of them. I am actually looking forward to it! It might take awhile with my schedule to get it all together, but it will be for the best.
We are thrilled with our new property managers. Jennifer and Tim take care of our cabin like it was their own treasured home!
Their first time to clean, they spent 8 hours cleaning from top to bottom. Jennifer even told me there were some things that had not been cleaned since the cabin was built! We sure paid the rental agent’s staff alot of money to do nothing.
When we arrived at the cabin last week, I was amazed to find how neat and clean every room, every closet and every corner of the cabin was. The sheets and towels that the previous crew would throw in bags under the bed were neatly folded and stacked in the closet. Not a thing was out of place.
Jennifer takes a complete inventory of the items in the cabin, and when something goes missing, she has notified me immediately. One tenant took our laundry basket and hot tub towels home because, as they told the rental agent: ’they didnt have time to pack their suitcase’?!!?? The rental agent used their deposit to replace our laundry basket and towels. Previously, the cleaners would not have noticed, or not have reported the loss and we would be responsible for replacing all the missing items.
Jennifer is a godsend to us and to the future ethical tenants who will be visiting the cabin.
A short drive farther up the Blue Ridge from the Church of the Frescoes you will happen upon Brinegar Cabin. This cabin was hand built by Martin Brinegar in the late 1800s. Somewhere around 1880. The family lived in the small cabin on 125 acres of property, and raised their family of at least 3 children here. They farmed the land and Caroline Brinegar maintained a family vegetable garden.
In addition to the main cabin, there are a few other structures on the property.
The Brinegars had a Spring House, a 3 walled structure, through which a cool sparkling spring bubbled up. The Brinegars used this spring for drinking and cooking water, but also to keep food chilled. They would place their food directly into the cold spring and the cold water would keep the food from spoiling. A morning trip to the spring was a ritual enjoyed by all members of the Brinegar family, mostly Caroline. Lugging large pails of water up the steep hill to the cabin was what supposedly kept Caroline in good physical shape.
There was also an outhouse and a food pantry with a root cellar below. Inside the cabin, stands the large 4 poster loom that Caroline had inherited from her mother. She made all the family’s clothing and warm blankets on this loom. Park Rangers still give loom demonstrations on the weekends in the cabin. The one in the picture to the right is the same type of loom used by Caroline Brinegar. 
The spinning wheels below are from inside the Brinegar cabin and are still used today by the Blue Ridge Park Rangers who conduct the loom demonstrations.
Harvest Day Festival – Oct. 2, 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m., Brinegar Cabin, Milepost 238, Blue Ridge Parkway
Visit the original cabin and site of Martin & Caroline Brinegar’s homeplace. Whether by location or choice, the Brinegars probably lived a more self sufficient lifestyle than many well into the 1900s. Fall is the time to finish harvesting the crops and plow the garden before winter sets in. Come see how the Brinegars made apple butter and other food preservation skills, as well as putting the garden to bed for the winter.
A few miles up the Blue Ridge Parkway, in the town of Glendale Springs, there is the quaint church “Holy Trinity Episcopal Church“. The church was built in 1901, but has undergone a recent revival due to the artist Ben Long.
Ben Long is a NC native who studied fresco painting in Italy. He desired bringing his skill and artistry home. He offered the frescoes in Holy Trinity Episcopal Church as a gift to the pastor Father Hodge.
A fresco is when a painting is done on wet plaster. The plaster then dries along with the paint and the painting is a permanent part of the wall.
There are a number of frescoes in Holy Trinity. The church is also in a quaint town with a lovely park and soup shop across the square. It is worth the drive from Bearfoot Hideaway.
Raffaldini Vineyards in the Yadkin Valley opened their new tasting house. It had been under construction for a few years. It was well worth the wait!
A visit to Raffaldini Vineyard Estates is like being in Tuscany. The elevation, the weather and the view from the Piedmont is gorgeous. The vineyard itself is massive and grows more than 30 grape varieties.
The tasting room is very well designed and is laid out. For $5 you can have a wine tasting and your own personal Raffaldini Vineyards wine glass to take home.
They are open each day of the week but Tuesday.
Springtime is one of our favorite times in the High Country of North Carolina. The flowers are blooming, trees are all in flower and all the birds are coming back. We already have 3 hummingbirds at our feeders. Another reason it is so lovely to be here in the Spring is because it is still not crowded by Summer visitors. The Winter activities are over, and so skiiers are gone, but the summer revelers have not yet arrived. The intersection of 421 and 105 is still a breeze to get through!
We spend alot of time in the Spring planting and gardening, something we love to do. Our azaleas, rhododendron, irises, lilacs, creeping phlox and kwanzan cherry trees are all in bloom. We even have some daffodils still in flower. I must have 300 daffodils and grape hyacinth scattered through all the garden areas on this property.
I can see the lupine plants are up, but not flowering yet, too early for that. The lilies have doubled in mass since last Spring.
My bleeding hearts come back year after year. Even with the bad winter we had this year, it seems most of my perennials and shrubs have made it through. My herbs have even made it through the winter and seem to have gone unnoticed by Bambi and her family.
HMMMM.
We have just been back to the cabin for the first time since December. The rental agent has been busy renting it out to skiiers, and visitors to the High Country.
We discovered some disturbing things this time. The glass doors to the fireplace were removed from the fireplace and sitting in a pile on the floor in the corner of the living room, all broken. We contacted the rental agent who reported that her cleaning staff thought that the visitors merely removed them to get more heat into the room! When we asked if she even noticed that the glass was all broken and in pieces, she claims she did not! VERY ODD
BOTH Direct TV remote controls were missing! How could a cleaner take care of this house for 3 years and NOT notice the TV remotes are missing?
We have the agent as property manager and their responsibility is to make sure no damage has been done to our home. This affects both our enjoyment, and the enjoyment of future visitors to our cabin.
I have lost confidence in the rental agent’s cleaning crew. I will be hiring my own property managers and they will interface directly with the rental agent in the future. We are in the bottom of the 9th with 2 outs and 2 strikes now. One more strike and we will be parting ways with the rental agent.
December 27, 2009 – 11:01 am
Glad to report, we encountered no problems leaving the cabin yesterday. The roads were cleared and well sanded or salted. Sky was clear and the ride home from Boone was without incident.
We passed by alot of downed trees and could see that there were still many homes without power. We are so glad we had the presence of mind to choose a cabin with underground utilities. Our incentive was an unobstructed view of the gorgeous mountains, but the added benefit of avoiding power outages is certainly high on our list of why we love our cabin.
We left with heavy hearts, because we know that the first quarter of 2010 will be too busy for us to get back to Boone.
December 25, 2009 – 3:34 pm
Ray’s Weather was right on again! Yesterday they predicted an ice storm would hit Boone starting at about 8PM Christmas Eve and last through the night into Christmas Day. I was sure glad we stock piled all the firewood. Ice storms are notarious for knocking out power lines.
The storm started last night, just as predicted, about 9PM. It was truly beautiful. Every tree branch, every surface and even every power line was encased in a crystal ice covering.
What we found beautiful proved to be terrible for some. At one point on Christmas morning, Blue Ridge Electric declared that 88% of Watauga County was without power on CHRISTMAS DAY!
How awful for families with small children expecting the twinkling lights of the Christmas Tree to herald in their visit from Santa!
What bad fortune for families hoping to have a large get together and cook turkeys, duck, roast beasts and more Holiday Fare.
We were so very fortunate! We did not lose a single second of electricity. Our power lines are underground, and our development has hardly ever lost power due to weather.
Snuggling in the cabin, we heard branches in the woods crack and fall under the weight of the ice. A few smaller branches even hit our roof, but no damage was done. Later in the day, we ventured out and up to the street. As the sun warmed the tree branches, there was a ‘rain’ of ice crystals cracking and falling off the trees. It was quite intriguing.
We are a bit concerned about the roads tomorrow when we have to head home.