by Colfer
Introduction
Riding down by the auto parts store in Waybo, with a skinny girl in a big Rita Heyworth bullet bra riding shotgun… but I digress. If you’re going to write about Waynesboro being a different world while not coming off as a snob, you’re still being a snob– unless you mention the lesbian in the waiting room.
I was waiting to get my car fixed over there, sitting on a plastic chair next to the coffee machine, and this tall woman across from me was reading a big hardback. I struck up a convo and before I knew it, she was telling me how she had come to realize that her grandmother had probably been homosexual, at least by nature. It was really extraordinary, and would never happen in Cville, where everybody is too guarded, from top to bottom. Now this lady herself– I have no idea of her orientation, I just wrote that she was a lesbian to get your attention, but her erudition and all that (“patrician manner,” they used to say), did contrast with what you see driving through Waybo, which is to say, not tres elegant. That neighborhood up the hill, that’s a different story. Suffice it to say, Waybo is no Staunton.
Hungry High School Girlfriends
Here’s a trip over the hill to the Shenandoah Valley for eats. It doesn’t take long to get there from Hookville. Don’t take I-64. We’re starting at Western Albemarle H.S. on US-250. If you’re picking up your girlfriend there, she better be a teacher or a lunch lady. Now you’ve come through the Ragged Mountains already, those big hills around Ivy, or, if you came in on I-64, that one big monster hill after the US-29 exit. You are in the beautiful Rockfish Valley. A slight earthquake fault runs down this valley, from Nellysford (Wintergreen) to Madison, but I’ll try to stick with the eats here. As you’re motoring west past the horse farms of Greenwood, look right, across the flat meadows, and you see I-64 already up high, carved into the side of monumental Bear Den Mountain. Someone made some serious biscuits building that piece of pork.
After the turn-off on the left for SR-151 and Nellysford (Blue Ridge Pig, and Blue Mountain Brewery), US-250 starts to climb a little mountain, and after one or two Lance Armstrongs, you’re at the shoulder of the pass with SR-6 at the left leading to the village of Afton. Further back on the right across I-64 is a really scary vehicle dump with rotten deer carcasses, but that’s not food, and you’ll never find it even if you were that hungry.
Now you’re on the crest of Rockfish Gap, a.k.a. Afton “Mountain,” where the two Blue Ridge parks meet, Skyline Drive and Blue Ridge Parkway. And there’s nothing to eat. I recommend the nuts and dried fruit in cellophane bags at the gas station. Once, this hilltop was a remote pleasure palace, with ice skating on the infinity rink at the Holiday Inn, wacko tours of the Swannanoa villa, and, best of all, an all-night HoJo’s to which a distressed late-adolescent could repair in the small hours and order coffee with his one still constant friend. And maybe eat ice cream. There will be lots of ice cream in this journey to the Great Valley.
Pretentious Pause
Stay on US-250 and descend into the Great Valley of Virginia. We will soon be at our first restaurant. But first a word of caution. (From me.) The Valley is a mysterious and conservative place. It has foreign things of which we can only dream, yet it is friendly to strangers, even tolerant of the most intolerable of all, Charlottesvillians. They won’t make fun of you there. Go to Richmond or Tidewater or somewhere and say you’re from “Sharlottsveel” and you might as well say you’re wearing a dress. Not so in the Valley, so just try to be decent yourselves. Don’t sit in some dive and make ironic comments about it. If you’re a couple, at least look like you’ve seen each other come and are not still trying to impress the other one that you’re a hip shit. Anybody can see that stuff; you might as well be naked.
Bullet Bras
Speaking of naked, you’re now coming into Waybo and passing Rockfish Gap Outfitters on the right, the friendlier alternative to the not-so-bad Blue Ridge Mountain Sports in Cville. So get some clothes on! The restaurant on the left was Chinese; whatever it is now, it is obvious you must avoid it. The next one on the right is a bar with no windows and a neon sign that says “BBQ.” I forget the name, but you will see it. As long as you go in the daytime (and act respectfully), no worries. The bathroom is out the side door and around back, and the lock is broken. They will cook you up some good enough BBQ and sandwiches and sides and stuff, sort of home cooking. The prices are too absurd to even mention. Notice the Budweiser Clamato & Beer display stand behind the bar. Last time I went, just the owners were there, because it was six o’clock in the afternoon. She cooked while he sat with his elbows on the bar smiling at us like we were the most adorable creatures he’d ever seen. And we’re not!
Coming up on the first light in Waybo, you can bear left and find the wide idyllic park by the South River to eat the BBQ sandwiches you have in a paper bag, in case you called your gf and she decided to go smoke pot instead of wait for you, even after you stopped at the music store to buy her guitar strings (Tim Spears Music City, 216 W. Main St. if it’s still there, near Cycle Recycle). People from Cville have been coming to this spacious riverside park since the 1960’s, right in the middle of Waybo (next to the plant). I forgot to mention, back by that first light is Fitzgerald Tires, in-laws of the great Fitzgerald who has the tire shop next to La Taza in the heart of Belmont. There’s also a Tastee Freeze with several flavors of milkshake. And maybe, for some reason (like it got wet or whatever), your new skinny gf may decide to pull off her shirt and ride around with a giant Rita Hayworth bullet bra on. I told you, it’s a mysterious place.
Dooms
Up on the right a few blocks off US-250 is Wayne Lanes, what we all wish Keglers in Cville would be, a small, home style bowling alley (208 N Charlotte Ave.). They don’t have duckpins, but they’ll put up gutter rails for the kids. They have some kind of snacks, and they do not recommend you go to the BBQ place I just mentioned, not with the kids (we did anyway). They say go to the Purple Foot a few blocks out on US-250 (1035 W Broad St.). You’re now on the west side of Waybo. The Purple Foot is a sort of food emporium cum craft store cum restaurant. I’m sure it’s the best restaurant in Waybo, but they have some seasonal hours or something so we talked to them but didn’t go there. I also hear there’s a dive sorta diner up along the RR tracks north of downtown, but I haven’t been there. Off in that direction lies the village of Dooms.
(Googling for the name of that BBQ joint, even this crappy listings page has some other possibilities, like Peck’s and Weasie’s. The more downtownish route through Waybo is not US-250 but its parallel, US-340, Main St. Bear left at the Tastee Freeze coming into town.)
Ned Flanders’ Turn-off
Leaving Waybo, staying on US-250 westward through the mishmash between it and Staunton, takes about twenty minutes. You’ll see some commercial vernacular (read: ugly), and gentle old residential areas, and then as you approach Staunton and another meet-up with I-64, you can take a big swooping 40 M.P.H. Ned Flanders turn into Western State Hospital. Or not. Staunton has, or had, a lot of institutions: mental hospital, former mental hospital, prison, School for the Mute & Hearing Impaired (they didn’t call it that). The word is they were pork projects that Richmond showered on Staunton to try to keep it “loyal” in the run-up to the Civil War. Are they really that old? Anyway, don’t eat at them.
After you cross under I-64 you descend into Staunton proper through mega strip land. You can read about how they abandoned an entire Walmart just so they could rip another hole in the mountain here at this blog. Do not stop at the fake chrome diner on your right, it’s just not right. This is not really Staunton up here. Keep on down the hill past the Staunton Steam Laundry. When I was a kid we used to write “no starch!!!!” on the tickets for our uniforms we sent there. I have a disturbing story about that.
Staunton: a Jewel
OK, our next restaurant. US-250 comes down the hill to meet… US-11, the great road from New Orleans to Canada! I said you were in a foreign country and this practically proves it. Where in Charlottesville can you get carhop service, thirty kinds of milkshake, and a jukebox? No gelato or espresso. Just turn left on US-11 and it’s one block on the right, Wright’s Dairy Rite, 346 Greenville Ave. Burgers, onion rings, and all that stuff. Everybody goes there from two counties around.
Now turn back and go north under the RR tracks into cute, church-happy Staunton. You’ll still be on US-250, which winds all through downtown. You can stay at the Stonewall Jackson Hotel, no longer a flop house, for now it has jacuzzis! On one side of town is the Blackfriars Playhouse, an amazing reconstruction of one of Shakespeare’s two main theaters. Blackfriars hires talented actors (I think they cast in NYC as well as locally), though they can be overly-enthusiastic for my taste, which is admittedly sour. I’d go back for a comedy. It’s unbelievable this place is in Staunton. For a conservative, penny-pinching place, they really have invested in shaking up downtown. (Contrast Waybo, which still looks like those pics of downtown Cville before the Mall. They are trying. I know.) On the other side of Staunton, up by the RR station and antique shops and art galleries, is the solid Pullman Restaurant, 36 Middlebrook Ave. It’s right by the station, with a bar, two big rooms, it’s mid-priced, and they know how to cook, Cville-style, if that’s what you must have. In between Blackfriars and the RR station are the little downtown streets that are now filling up with coffee shops and shmancy restaurants (see Sian’s comments about Zynodoa). Also down there, you can see glass being made, etc. etc. They really put on the effort in S-town.
Staying on US-250 west, well… I forgot a few things back in Staunton, the Frontier Culture Museum (People harvesting flax! Cooking by an open hearth! Draft horses! Conservative non-classist cultural second-wave immigrant heritage!), Woodrow Wilson stuff (freed the world, segregated D.C.), Mary Baldwin College (cultural events). Anyhoo, back on winding US-250, the west side of Staunton is all about Gypsy Hill Park. This is a fantastic, sprawling park for rambling, feeding ducks, hearing music & lectures, and chatting with hippies. The Valley has a fair share of hippies, or anyway the ones you meet are symaptico. In the middle of the park is an actual cave. The Valley is mainly limestone, caves everywhere. The one in Gypsy Hill Park has a water entrance, so forget seeing it, but it’s there.
Futher Adventures in Gas Stations & Romance
Now you can keep going west on US-250 towards Highland County if you want, or all the way to Ohio. The last food stop is a wind-blown gas station on the left. Best to get the BBQ or breakfast biscuits in a place like that. For chicken, come back to Cville and go to the Shell next to Bodos on Preston, or the Amoco on Fontaine.
Staying in the Valley, back in Staunton take US-11 north (or I-81) and go to Harrisonburg. We are approaching mecca now. In downtown Hburg is a big, square, court square. The restaurant/taverns on the southeast side are good, and probably somewhere else along that big square too. But that is not mecca.
Stay on US-11 unto the north side of Hburg. It starts to look like a feed lot. Then on the left you will see its retro sign. The Little Grill Collective, a worker-owned cooperative restaurant. Music on weekends, open mikes on weekdays (621 N Main St.). It has been blessed, acoustically, by all the famous little musicians of Cville, if that makes it kosher for you. The Little Grill is well run, has meaty stuff but also lots of veg and vegan, is sometimes overrun by JMU’s more eco-minded students, and is just a great model for what a place like that can be. Now let me get negative. It has none of the grunginess, the forgotten sides, the waitrons serving their friends first, which would smack of a certain diner on Main Street in Charlottesville. Valley people just do not comprehend such stunts. That’s it for the negative, now get your good on and go to the Little Grill!
Further up (or “down” since the rivers flow north) US-11 is New Market, with a large if somewhat random bookstore in an old car dealership, and an ice cream stand. Over in Luray is an actual downtown movie theater (last time I was there), and an ice cream stand. Did I mention Wright’s Dairy Rite in Staunton has thirty flavors of milkshake? Yep, the val is craze for the dairprods.
Now back over in Hburg is US-33 which runs west into the Appalachians, just like 250 runs west from Staunton. You get to a certain elevation and then the road becomes a curly queue. At the top of one of those queues is Spruce Knob, the highest point in West Virginia. And the spruces are knobby up there. Due to the thin air, the tallest trees are just big shrubs. The terrible and convenient thing is that you can drive to the top of Spruce Knob and park! You can stay as the sun descends in December, the chill air under the three-quarter moon. Sometimes there will be a young couple out making love on the talus rocks, frigidly, a last hurrah before she goes back to Northwestern and you off to Appalachian State. Now if only you had retrieved that fuzzy blue blanket from the trunk, and placed it gently upon the rocks, maybe the letters would not have trailed off…
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Tagged as: Activities, Albemarle County, Central Virginia, Charlottesville, History, Ice Cream, Music, Reviews
I’d just like to make the first comment on this, after having edited it (barely) and linking to locations, most of which I’d never heard of or knew precious little about.
Colfer has done something incredible here, for you, and I hope you all take a little chunk of your lunch breaks today to read this and thank him. This is a very well-written piece. I hope you enjoy the imagery and anecdotes he provides.
I was showing property in Waynesboro last year and pulled up to a stoplight alongside another car. The guy caught my attention, rolled down his window and said, “Hi! How’re ya doing?” That’s it; and something that likely would not happen in Charlottesville anymore.
Got me itchin’ to make a roadtrip. To the Oy’mobile!
Great review, Colfer. Maybe we should put this stuff on a map for you and include it in the bottom of this post.
Isn’t that chrome diner now a Five Guys?
Great piece, Colfer. Don’t forget to stop in, have a draft, and say hi to Dave and Nina Atwell at their Greenwood Country Store on Rt-250 just before the 151 turn-off.
GREAT write-up, Colfer! I absolutely need to take a day-trip out there.
i’ve done several road trips all along those areas, great summation of all the nooks along the route! and i picked up some new spots to check out the next time i dust off the old road trip mobile. just don’t forget to swing by the purple cow head on your way back through waynesboro.
excellent read. thanks again.
Gypsy Hill Park… great memory there… ducks and big band on a summer evening.
Magnificent, Colfer. You paint a vivid picture with your words. I remember vacationing at the Afton Holiday Inn as a young lad and ice skating for hours on the little rink beside it. FYI, the no name bbque place in Waynbo is “Ed’s Grill.” And, regrettably, Peck’s bbque has closed.
Thanks, colfer!
Can I suggest a villain bowling outing to Wayne Lanes or a Shakespearean trip to Blackfriars without sounding all cliquey?
Great write up, Thanks! My friends and I love making the occasional trip to Wayne Lanes…less expensive than keglers…worth the drive.
The fake chrome diner is no longer a fake chrome diner. Last year it was bought by and converted into one of those crappy burger chain places that people love for no apparent reason. Whatsitcalled, the place with the peanut shells on the floor?
It’s a Five Guys now.
aww, this is great! does anyone have a motorcycle to which they wouldn’t mind appending a villainette once the weather warms up for good?
i’d love to hear the “no starch” story, colfer…
I recall that diner being mediocre, 9 years ago. Does that still make me too young to really know this place? How long had it been there? And mediocrity aside, that it ends up a chain makes me sad. Even if there was a huge ugly Walmart across from it. (Walmarts are important for low-income populations, but I’d rather they be Targets.) Slight digression, any update on the “historical status” of the KMart on Hydraulic?
Don’t forget the Green Valley Book Fair just south of Harrisonburg. Opened only about half the year. But worth a pop in to load up on books you think you’ll read but actually never will.
http://www.gvbookfair.com/
I highly recomend Mill Street restaurant across from the Stonewall Jackson Hotel. It is my favorite, including cville.
Five Guys is the most delicious burger experience a human being can have. I will not tolerate such slander. What’s the big deal if it’s a chain? It’s not like their that big, and they don’t use their chainness (yes, I just made up a word…take note Oxford) to do anything fancy or overbearing. I think people just like to hate on chains because it makes them look hip and cool. That being said, Walmart is the most evil entity on the planet. I highly suggest watching “Walmart: The High Cost of Low Prices.” Great doc that will infuriate you. It causes far more harm than good to low income people, especially in smaller towns where they are the only store around (Charlottesville is lucky enough to have plenty of alternatives for both employment and shopping purposes).
what Tim said – 5 Guys might be a chain, but they’re a NoVA chain, so they’re homies.
Mill Street is pretty good. I like the unpretentious atmosphere.
I would also like to note that you all use the phrase NoVa, yet when I used it the other day the person I was talking to told me that made it obvious I am not from around here! Next time I am going to direct them to Cvillain.
Nonsense. Nova is perfectly acceptable homey lingo.
Thank you. You made me Smile
Great Batesville minds think alike, Mill Street is awesome both in portions and quality from the fresh bread right down to the complimentary crushed peppermint ice cream. We usually hit Mill Street either before or after hiking on weekends. Their Bunch is the best time to visit, and they usually have several unique selections. For example, the first time I ever had that local delicacy, Shad Roe, was there.
On the contrary, NoVa is used only around here. Since the community college up there is called NOVA (where the N stands for knowledge), everybody there calls it Northern Virginia.
There are also quite a few places in the valley that are special for other reasons. The Milmont nursery in Stuarts Draft run by Mennonites is a great place to pick up plants for your garden on the cheap.
Not far away is a remanent piece of eastern prairie left behind from back when Bison and elk used to graze the Shenendoah Valley.
If you like hiking, then the Maple Flats area along Coal Rd. is one of the most unique areas around. It is covered with a multitude of sinkhole ponds, and has a multitude of rare plants, including some that only exist in a few other places in the entire world.
I used to hear about this restaurant The Beverly in Staunton, like it was the only restaurant in town back then. Anybody know about it? It has a website, says it’s at 12 E. Beverley St.
Also, there’s the antiquing thing in Staunton, but I don’t know much about it. There used to be a real bargain bin there, like ten years ago. I don’t know if it’s gone up.
Thanks for the light & just editing Lilith though I think [this is a man, talking] should be in brackets, or left out.
And for the kind comments.
I don’t wanna tell the starch story.
What Tim said – saying “Nova” is a central VA thing. If I was talking to someone from NoVA, I’d say I was from Vienna; if I was talking to someone from another part of the country, I’d say I was from D.C. (something I’d *never* say to someone from NoVA)
I think it’s more of a fact that northern virginia is pretty homogeneously lame and thus the reason to call it nova.
Staunton is a beautiful place to visit and the old train depot houses a big bar.
Nova’s a community college. Not originally from Nova (that I’m aware of), just sick of hearing the word. I’m not perfect about respecting this, but does anyone else feel totally offended when someone hates on their hometown? I think, “Well if I could be born in Bangkok before spending ages 3 through 10 in Paris with stints in Kyoto, I would have. But instead my parents raised me in ____, a-hole.”
colfer, that was a quick editorial call, to be honest, because I didn’t get the expression. It was a “head scratch, hmm, try this.” Omitted!
Lilith, people hate on my hometown of Nashville, TN, without ever having been there. I grew up listening to every sort of music, avoiding country like the plague (same as everyone else I knew). We had an awesome music scene, because of all the publishing and recording houses in town. Everyone eventually plays Nashville. And hardly anyone is actually born and raised in Nashville, making it a very cosmopolitan, mid-sized city which also serves as the capitol of Tennessee.
People seem to presume that it’s full of backward hicks. You can complain about the traffic or that it seems to have grown in a sort of weird and illogical way, but no hating on the city or the people unless you can move beyond incorrect stereotypes.
I love Nashville! One night on Broadway would shut those folks up real fast.
I mentioned this ages ago.
Watch it!
Two words: Colfer Rocks.
I’m from the Valley, and I agree with pretty much all of what’s written. Anybody that judges it without knowing what’s there can kiss my cute little butt.
I will pipe up about these few changes – the used book store in New Market is no more as far as I know. The building looked very vacant the last time I was in town a few months ago. And a good stop for authentic home cookin’ in New Market is Southern Kitchen. Right on Route 11, vintage booths & tables, damn good food.
As previously established, what used to be a decent fake diner in Staunton is now a Five Guys. I won’t complain, I like Five Guys, even though that diner did make good cheese fries.
BUT you cannot talk about Harrisonburg without mentioning Kline’s. They make ice cream – chocolate, vanilla and a special flavor every week, which can range from raspberry to chocolate peanut butter to a seasonal pumpkin. It’s a tradition. (North Harrisonburg, off Rt 11 at the end of “downtown” before the Little Grill)
What a strange and vaguely hallucinogenic post. Thank you!
Kline’s Dairy Bar, 58 E Wolfe St, corner of N. Main St. (US-11). Thanks, I’ll try it. Which are the good places on that big town square in HBurg?
Speaking of Docs and Walmart a co-worker of mine told me a creepy story about this psychologist in Waybo…
He starts telling her how he hates when his wife wants to go to Walmart and he waits in the car while she’s shopping, and to pass the time, he plays a little game.
The game is, he details to her, is to scope out women walking out of the store alone, and he watches them go back to their cars and observes how vulnerable they let themselves be to an attack.
He tells her how this one chick would have been so easy to sneak up on and just bash her head in real quick.
True story.
Can Colfer go full time with the articles? That was great!
( a little concerned about “sort of food emporium cum craft store cum restaurant.” though).
On Court Square? Eeesh, there’s not that much, IMO.
Jess’s Lunch isn’t necessarily exceedingly great eats, but it’s been around forever and is good for a quick burger or sandwich.
Dave’s Taverna is delicious, but I’ve heard varying stories about the quality of service. I have never really had a problem, they’ve just been vaguely slow, but the quality of the food makes up for it.
Right beside Kline’s is one of my favorite BBQ places, the Smokin Pig. They’ve got two kinds of sauce depending if you want sweet or vinegar, and they have fried pickles, which I hear are awesome, but I don’t like non-fried pickles.
It’s carry out only (or used to be), but there are a few picnic tables outside but BBQ is better meant for picnics int he park.
Coincidentally enough, there was a post on Hburg News a few days ago about favorite Burg restaurants: http://hburgnews.com/2008/02/01/favorite-restaurants/
Some of the ones they’re talking about have opened since I’ve moved over here. I haven’t gotten the chance to try them yet, seeing as whenever I’m over there I’m seeing family and usually eating with them at home.
You forgot one of the greatest spots on Afton Mountain. Swanannoa Country Club located at the top of Afton Mountain. The views are breathtaking and the golf experience is unforgettable. Pete Lang has been the owner and pro for over 55 years and he is quite a character. Worth a visit. His favorite hangout is Weasies when he is not on the mountain.
Ever notice that a lot of older folks from Waynesboro have super leathery skin? I think that it’s because of the Dupont factory there. Lots of chemicals in that joint! Back when I played golf, I used to play lots at The Waynesboro Country Club. Now THAT’s a country club! The pro shop is in a doublewide…
God damn I hate country clubs…
And Swananoa used to have a lot of people that played golf without shirts and that wore jean shorts. What’s the deal with jean shorts? Do people still were em? Not a good look…..
OMFG…ROFLMAO…HAHAHAHAHA