“What would y’all li-ike for your si-ide?” Laken asked after I told her I would have the B&B Burger – the Bacon and Bleu.
I asked if I could have the grits.
“We don’t have gri-its no more,” she said.
“We’re from California, and Ah’ve had gri-its ever’ day since I got here last month,” I lied.
“They waren’t no good anywhys,” she added.
So I requested the fries.
We had come from Hanging Rock State Park where we hiked down to Upper Cascade Falls, if that makes any sense, then hiked back up and bought slushies from a man inside a blue and white truck who had been snarky when we had asked how long he would be there before heading down the trail but was friendly as a puppy after we came back up and bought 2 mediums.
Traveling Companion (TC) had recorded a negative COVID-19 this morning, so we had decided to close out her Isolation and move our Quarantine outside, with masks of course. Someone mentioned waterfalls, and Google Maps showed us a cluster of ‘em in Hanging Rock SP, so we headed that way.
We marveled almost non-stop at the abundance of greenery along the highways in North Carolina, sometimes maintained but mostly overgrown and competing with the other greenery for light. Woods, ivy, meadows, manicured lawns, graceful 2-story houses set on rises 100 yards or more from the 2-lane highway, mansions set in natural cutouts off curves in the highway with no other houses visible and no overhead wires or poles providing services and moss-covered cliff walls behind them, ramshackle homes with rusted appliances and paint cans and bicycles on the porch, outbuildings, burned-out barns from a century or more ago, dilapidated barns still housing farm equipment, new barns with shiny tractors, a chimney rising up from an empty slab, and Baptist churches with tall white steeples. Dollar General appeared to be the dominant retail outlet, service stations advertised “non-ethanol” fuel, and Domestic Violence Awareness was the subject of the only billboard we saw.
These counties decreased in population from 2010 to 2020, are 90% white, and voted 75% Republican in the 2020 Presidential Election.
We finally reached Hanging Rock Park Road, noted a “homemade ice cream” sign outside the café at the intersection, and drove slowly up the hill in what counts in North Carolina as “traffic” – 3 cars. Parked, checked visitor center map, identified closest waterfall, oriented ourselves via the only visible star because no cell phone signal, then hiked to the falls.
The hike back up from the falls was sweatier than we anticipated, but we made it to the top before the slushie man closed. We drank part of our slushies sitting on a bench outside the Visitor Center, then drove slowly back down the access road with no traffic. We turned left instead of right at the intersection of the access road and the highway, skipping the homemade ice cream, and heading in the opposite direction from the AIrBNB so we could see another part of the state. It was similar to the landscape coming into the park, only more rural with more frequent, and bigger, churches. We drove more slowly, using turnouts when cars got too close behind us. We saw blue and white 5-pointed Stars on some houses, “Thank you, Jesus” signs in the some yards, occasional “Thank you, Science” signs, (although these are far more plentiful in the cities,) and one house with “GO AWAY” written on the front door.
After a while, we talked about what we wanted for dinner and settled on “American Café” as the cuisine style. TC summoned Google Maps, which suggested Chase & Charli by the River, which turned out to be the Ararat River in Mt. Airy, NC, which as we all know is the model town for Mayberry on Andy Griffith. We didn’t even know we were close to Mt. Airy, but before we knew it, we were crossing the bridge over the Ararat and the Google voice was telling us, “Your destination is on the left.”
The gravel parking lot had zero available marked spaces, but cars and trucks had parked behind other cars and trucks that had room to pull forward to leave, so despite a sign advising of overflow parking just up the street a piece, we parked our Volkswagen Rabbit behind a Nissan Rogue.
We chose a table on the deck outside, on account of the recent positive test and on account of the 75 degree temperature under slightly cloudy skies and on account of that flowing water sound.
The B&B was simply the best burger I remember in a long time, comparable to the burgers I used to eat at Knollwood in Anaheim.
The ingredients are classic – Bacon and Bleu, with lettuce, tomato and raw onion, all of which were in perfect proportion to each other.
Patty – ½ pound ground beef, cooked medium, and hot all the way through.
Above the patty:
Lettuce – 2 iceburg half leaves spooning each other concave side up.
Tomato – 1 slice.
Bacon – 1 slice, just enough for flavor.
Bleu – maybe 2 teaspoons, and crumbled so small that it melted but didn’t drip out.
Under the patty
About 1/8 slice of onion, broken apart into individual quarter rings, just enough to add flavor but not enough to spoil kissing later on.
Bun – brioche, lightly toasted without butter or oil and substantial enough to retain consistency until the patty was gone.
I never had to resort to knife and fork like you do with messier burgers.
The fries were good, too, though nothing to rave about, and the serving size was more than ample (I left half), and I’ll bet they were better than the grits used to be.
We took the Interstate back to the B&B, where we watched Jeopardy episodes we had recorded during the Isolation.
The Billy Pulpit 