Mabry Mill is the most photographed spot on the Blue Ridge Parkway, and with good reason. At milepost 176, the old red mill with its great wooden water wheel stands beside a millpond, framed by rhododendron and maple, and in autumn the reflection of the colours in the water is a postcard in itself. Edwin Boone Mabry built the mill in the early 1900s, using a gristmill, a sawmill and a blacksmith shop to serve his neighbours, and it stayed in use until the 1930s. Today the buildings are preserved by the National Park Service, and in the summer costumed demonstrators grind corn and work the forge.
The mill sits on the Rocky Knob plateau, in the part of Virginia known as the Meadows of Dan, a high, rolling country of farms and woods in the foothills of the Blue Ridge. The area is rich in mountain music, with banjos, fiddles and flatpicking guitars, and the Crooked Road, Virginia's heritage music trail, runs through the nearby town of Floyd, where a country store hosts a Friday night jamboree that draws crowds from all over the region. The Parkway itself, built in the 1930s and completed in 1987, runs for 469 miles along the crest of the Appalachians from Virginia to North Carolina, and it is the most visited unit in the national park system.
The riding is among the best in the East. The Parkway has a speed limit of 45 miles an hour, with long, graceful curves, wide views and no commercial traffic or traffic lights, and the surface is smooth and clean. Deer, wild turkeys and even bears wander across the road, particularly at dawn and dusk. Fog is common and can come down suddenly, and in spring and autumn, ice can form on the road in the morning, and sections close in winter. The best time is October, for colour, but the crowds are heaviest then, so weekdays are best.
The mill has a restaurant, famous for its buckwheat and cornmeal pancakes with sorghum syrup, and the queues build up by midmorning, so come early. Mount Airy, thirty-three kilometres away, the town that inspired Mayberry in The Andy Griffith Show, is a bigger place with every service.
Take a stroll around the pond and watch the wheel turn. It is a quiet, old-fashioned corner of America, and it is easy to see why people keep coming back.