We spent the night at the La Quinta motel in Bristol, Virginia (and had supper on the 1st at the Kobe Japanese steak house, sort of a Benihana wannabe, across the interstate from the motel) and managed to find the bi-state main street:
Tennessee on the left, Virginia on the right, state line on the yellow line in the middle.
We went into a pawnshop that was in a former Woolworth store and had a real Woolworth lunch counter — very likely the site of one or more lunch counter sit-ins during the civil rights struggle era, and certainly similar to many such.
Heading south from town we passed the Bristol (TN! I said south) Speedway, which sounded familiar from glancing at sports pages — I’m sure some Nascar people have been in the lead because of winning at Bristol — and then followed the GPS’s directions off the main highway onto some county roads that led up over the mountains into North Carolina. It looked as though we had lots of time. In Spruce Pine NC we stopped for lunch in a cafe that felt just like trendy cafes in places like Northampton MA or Brunswick ME, and went into a stationery store that was a lot like non-Staples stationery stores, except that their stock “No Trespassing” sign said “or burl digging” in addition to “no hunting.”
We stopped at the mineral museum next to the Blue Ridge Parkway, missed the entrance to the parkway and drove a couple of miles out of our way along a very winding road (route 226 A; trucks are discouraged from using it, follow 226 proper) and a couple of miles back, and eventually followed the proper directions to Wildacres. Even after all that, we were an hour before checkin time.
FYI, the Woolworth’s lunch counter is now open and serving sandwiches, chips, sundae’s and etc.