Mt. Airy, North Carolina

This morning started out as a very relaxing, quiet morning. I poured myself a cup of coffee, read some blogs and sent a rather long note to my friend Darlene. Then I sat in the sunshine coming through my glass door and did some handquilting. Ahhhh...nothing like a nice peaceful Sunday morning.

Then....my husband gets up. He is looking up family history on the computer and notes that his great x5 grandfather is buried in Mt. Airy, NC and he sure would like to go up there and get a picture of the tombstone (its a genealogical thing - kind of like our collecting fat quarters). So considering that starting tomorrow he has to work 6 days a week, 56 hours - and knowing this is his last day in probably two months that he will feel like getting out of town...I innocently respond, why don't we go up there today. Man, I didn't know he could move that fast. He was up, getting dressed and had his camera and stuff ready to go before I knew what was happening.

I have been working a lot of long hours of late too, so this was a good break for me. I gathered up my hand quilting and my book, my camera and my phone and off we go.

We found the church (Flat Rock Baptist) with no problem and the cemetery, but alas no greatx5 grandfather tombstone. I did get a picture of this one that I thought was very interesting. This guy founded the church and was a Civil War Veteran. While my husband scoured the remainder of the cemetery, I found a bench under a shade tree and worked on my hand quilting.

But, something kept tickling my brain about Mt. Airy..what is it...then I remembered! Andy Griffith and Mayberry. This town is the inspiration for the Andy Griffith show! So after the disappointment of not finding Grandpa, we headed downtown to the historic area - which of course is all about Mayberry and the Andy Griffith show. It was so much fun. We never did find the police station, but we did find Floyd's Barber shop and Andy Griffith's home place.

As famous as Andy Griffith is, that is not all that Mt. Airy is famous for - also located here is the NC Granite Corporation. This is the largest granite quarry in the world according to the lady at the visitor's center. All I know is it was very impressive.

Those of you that are Andy Griffith show followers, no doubt have heard Barney talk about Mt. Pilot. I am not sure if there is a Mt. Pilot or not, but there is a Pilot Mountain and we met some folks from Pennsylvania who were visiting Mt. Airy and they told us about it. Now isn't that something - they had to come all the way from Pa to tell us about something in the Carolinas. It is only 14 miles from Mt. Airy - so off we go, to see this mountain. Here is a picture from a distance and then one from on top of the mountain.

There is a quilt shop and a fabric shop both on Main Street in Mt. Airy and both closed on Sundays. We had a great day, the weather was perfect and as always, it was fun to find a gem in our own back yard.