Saturday, September 10, 2011

Slow start today; we left the hotel around 9:45 traveling about 10 miles to Fancy Gap where they were having an Apple Festival with Bluegrass music. Shouldn’t have been surprised when we arrived and found it was about 6 vendors since Fancy Gap is about 1 mile on one road. We began to walk around the vendors and one was spinning Alpaca hair into yarn. Several of us gathered around and began asking questions and the mother said they had a farm about 4 miles south on the Blue Ridge and she would be happy to go home and give us a tour if we would like. Would we like? Oh yes! So in about an hour we headed for the farm. She was a wealth of knowledge; they currently have about 47 Alpaca and several of them are blue ribbon winners. Each is named and they have the most beautiful black eyes and curious looks as they tried to figure out who we were. And anything made of Alpaca hair is so soft and expensive. After leaving we headed back to Fancy Gap for lunch and then off to meander back mountain roads ending at the hotel after about an hour or so. We packed the trailer for the trip home tomorrow. I don’t understand how we traveled for 11 years without a trailer and we did just fine but now we can barely stuff everything we need in this oversized trailer. Banquet as usual was good food and lots of fun exchanging door prizes and gag gifts given to match issues experienced during the week. Ken received a coonskin hat with a tail and a gun for being the tail-gunner all week; Ginny received glasses because she is always borrowing someone’s glasses to read the menu; Don received earplugs because he had me as a passenger all week (wonder what that’s all about) and the list goes on and on. Winners of the 50/50 were Ken, Glenn and Willa. Back at the hotel hugs and kisses and goodbyes are said as we each decide our routes home and two or three join up in small groups to travel together. The rally has ended for 2011.