It was late April and while a lingering drought was putting a hurting on much of the state, the lack of rain did at least mean we were experiencing a bounty of sunny days. Good for road trips but bad for the environment! I decided to take advantage of the pretty weather and head west to the mountains for an overnight trip.

You may not be familiar with Mocksville, NC but there was a time before the completion of I-40 when the most direct route between Chapel Hill and Asheville required driving through Mocksville. My husband Ron is from Asheville so Mocksville was infamous for the two of us in the 1970s as the town that could seriously slow down our travels back and forth.

I hadn’t thought of Mocksville in decades but it turned out to be a pleasant stop on my drive through the back roads of North Carolina. Like seemingly every town in America, Mocksville has an independently owned coffee shop so I was able to sit and take in the sights and sounds of downtown with coffee in hand. I wanted to get back on the road so I wasn’t able to stick around for that evening’s weekly coffee shop session of Jesus with Joe.

Alexander County is one of many North Carolina counties that is primarily rural. Bethlehem, the largest town in Alexander, has a population of around 4,500 people. From my days working in a statewide mentoring program, I remember talking with people from rural communities about the challenges of working with youth in areas without malls, movie theaters, swimming pools, or internet access. One thing you will find in Alexander County is vista after vista of breathtakingly beautiful, rolling green hills of which I unfortunately didn’t get any pictures! Those hills have yielded interesting gemstones in the past and the Alexander County town of Hiddenite is named after one of them.

In nearby Burke County, the terrain was more mountainous and the roads became more and more twisty. So twisty, in fact, that I had a hard time always knowing exactly which county I was in. A display at the Brown Mountain overlook let me know I was in Burke County but I’m not sure if the view I captured was in Burke or someplace else. I’d hoped to walk down to Linville Falls but again was tripped up by twists and turns along the way and was never able to find the paths that would lead me to the falls.

I ended my day at the Skyline Village Inn in Mitchell County, just south of Spruce Pine and right next to the Blue Ridge Parkway. I was surprised to find that I was the only guest in the hotel and, since the proprietors live next door, the only person in the building. I had the whole place to myself which felt equal parts liberating and unsettling.

The next morning I traveled to Linville Caverns in McDowell County. I had been to the caverns once before on a family trip with my husband and elementary-school age daughters. Unfortunately, the price of admission was too much for our financially strapped family then so we had to settle for perusing the gift shop. This time around, I was able to afford a ticket and got to see the caverns from the inside!

I left the caverns to seek out an elusive coffee cup house in Caldwell County I had heard about on WRAL’s Tar Heel Traveler. I’d tried unsuccessfully to find it the day before but was determined not to miss it before heading home. Finding places on dirt roads in areas with no internet service can be a challenge but my determination eventually paid off.

April 22 – 23, 2026 – Counties #76, 77, 78, 79, 80, and 81 – Davie, Alexander, Burke, Mitchell, McDowell, and Caldwell