While it was set in Mayberry, the one and only Snappy Lunch and their famous pork chop sandwich was and is right here in Mount Airy, North Carolina. This was the birthplace of Andy Griffith and the inspiration for the fictional Mayberry on his TV show called “The Andy Griffith Show,” which ran for most of the 1960s. Not only did it put small-town America on center stage, but it also propelled Floyd’s Barbershop into a cult status that has endured for the past five decades. We were able to have breakfast at Snappy Lunch, but it was too early for a pork chop sandwich, and although the sign says open at Floyd’s, it wasn’t yet as someone apparently forgot to flip the sign before locking up the day before. Two weeks before our arrival, the real Floyd the Barber passed away at age 92, Don Knotts passed away in 2006, and Andy Griffith died just four years before. Only Jim Nabors and Ron Howard were still around the day of our visit to the town, which catapulted their careers.

Here we are on the Fancy Gap Highway at the Virginia and North Carolina state lines. We’ll continue north to Fancy Gap, reconnect with the Blue Ridge Parkway, and meander across southern Virginia to see what its countryside looks like.

This was somewhere near The Saddle Overlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway. We’ve moved up into the clouds.

It’s beautiful out here in the solitude and quiet that the fog helps create. Without much of a horizon and the fact we are here before the summer season on a Wednesday, it feels like the world is ours and ours alone. The great thing about days like this is that when we come back someday it will appear as an entirely new place.

Yesterday, I mentioned that this was a pivotal 48 hours in my life, so here’s another part of that change. On May 4th, I was diagnosed with diabetes. On that very day, I made an appointment with a dietitian for May 12th, the day before leaving on this vacation. In the eight days between diagnosis and my next appointment, I made a radical change in my diet and started walking. Over those days, my blood glucose went from about 300 down to the 140s, and with that, I told the dietitian that I was refusing to go on insulin and that I asked her to bear with me as I showed her trending graph of where my blood glucose levels appeared to be heading. Reluctantly, she agreed but asked that I go get a Fitbit and start tracking how much physical activity I was getting. Caroline got one, too; as a matter of fact, you can see it on her in the background of this photo.

Caroline initially didn’t want to spend the extra money on a Fitbit for her, but while we’ve been back here, we have been making a game of getting more steps than each other. When we stop for gas now, she’ll jump out and pace back and forth to accumulate more steps, which prompts me to set the tank to fill and then start racing around the car myself. While we may look like loons to others as we walk around in circles, we are hoping it will continue to have a positive impact on my diabetes. All of the BBQ also plays well into this, as I’ve cut out sugar, rice, potatoes, pasta, bread, and, to a large extent, fruit until I get this under control.

Speaking of BBQ, dinner tonight was at The Pit in Durham, North Carolina. [Now closed]

Tomorrow’s blog entry will detail the third part of this monumental change in my life.