College Town - Blacksburg, Virginia

 Ed and I drove from Bluffton, SC to Blacksburg, VA.  I was glad he was driving because it was getting dark by the time we arrived and checked into our hotel.  It was a longer day of driving than I would have done had I been on my own. 

I chose Blacksburg because it was approximately halfway home from Bluffton.  It was easy to figure it out, because I plotted a map to home and found that google maps put a label right on the center point.  I looke for the town name under the label, then searched for the closest yarn store, which turned out to be Blacksburg.  According to google, the town also had a bicycle shop or two or three and several bookstores, being a college town. 

First stop was supposed to be the downtown bicycle shop, but google maps directed us to turn into a parking lot and we couldn't see any bike shop.  We did see a lot of students, on foot, we must have arrived during class change time. 

There are a couple of other bike shops in town, but they were a couple of miles away, definitely not in walking distance.  

 So, onward to the yarn shop.  There wasn't any parking in front of the store on on the side street, but we did find a place to park around the block.  

 

Inside the shop, the first thing I saw was the artful button display. 

 

The wall facing the entrance held a display of locally-dyed wool.  

 

The store was an art store as well as a yarn store.  The back half of the store was devoted to paints, brushes, canvases, and other art supplies.  The owner was a former Virginia Tech student, who had graduated and briefly moved to New York City and managed an art supply store, then returned to the mountains of western Virginia to manage a LYS.  When the owner decided to sell, Jessica chose to invest and opened New River Art and Fiber. 

I chose to walk to the nearby bookstore.  It was a cold, windy, gray day. Ed elected to return to the car.  Therefore he missed seeing one of the 16 frog sculptures strategically located around town.  

 

Once I returned home, I looked up the frog and found that there is an entire website devoted to the sculptures.  The one I saw was named "Harvey" and you can read about the person he was named after, Harvey Black,  here, one of the founders of Virginia Tech, which was then called Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College.  

I arrived at my destination a block or so later.  Unfortunately, the bookstore was apparently closed in spite of the hours posted on the door.  

 

I saw snow in the parking lot when I returned on foot to the car.  It had been a week since I'd seen snow! 

I also noticed   a bit of litter, mostly beer cans.  I suppose it is the inevitable result of being in a college town.  

When I reached the car, we decided to return home.  But first, on the way out of town, we stopped at the local Goodwill where I purchased a couple of disposable wine glasses, having already broken one of the ones I purchased earlier on the trip.