Cruising Across Carolina: Mayberry vibes and peaceful waters in NC’s Northern Piedmont

This is the fourth installment in Cruising Across Carolina, Martha Quillin’s summer road trip across the Tar Heel State’s backroads and byways.

The season you love the most always seems the shortest. I can’t believe we’re halfway through our summer travels across the state.

Subtle signs mark the passing time: corn that was knee-high when we set out in late May is now being harvested and stacked high at farmers markets. The back end of my car is less stuffed, since I swapped the pile of blankets that were so welcome in my tent in those early weeks for fans and batteries that make sleep possible in July heat. The paper road map that was fresh and new when I started is crinkled at the corners and showing wear on the folds.

So as I plotted my exploration of what we’re calling the “Northern Piedmont,” a sense of urgency compelled me to fill the days with as many experiences as possible. I took a different approach to this section of the state since it’s sort of an extension of our own back yard.

It’s full of attractions that can lure you out of the house for a solid 12 hours of fun. But you don’t have to eat up a week of vacation or even spring for an overnight stay.

Gas up. Lace up your walking shoes. The days are already getting shorter.

This week’s itinerary

The main spots: A stretch of U.S. 64 from Ramseur to Siler City to Pittsboro that includes a U-pick farm, a winery and an historic bridge. Stops in Hillsborough, Mebane and Saxapahaw to hike Occoneechee Mountain, see a historic home, a ghostly racetrack and some fun shops, and to hear live music on a Saturday night. A day in Mount Airy to fully immerse in Mayberry culture. A night outside Stokesdale in a precise replica of the cabin where Henry David Thoreau lived on Walden Pond. And a different kind of immersion, floating down the Dan River.

Length of trip: Each of these excursions could be done as day trips, though as Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes cartoons) would say, “The days are just packed.” Thoreau’s cabin is an overnight stay that I fit between what would otherwise have been two day trips.

Don’t feel bad about knocking off a stop or two to save for later; it’s good to have something to do in the winter, too.

A crop for all seasons

For the first trip, head out early and get breakfast at the Small B&B Cafe in Pittsboro, which has indoor dining as well as a garden patio. The cafe is closed Mondays and Tuesdays but open for breakfast and lunch the other days.

Specialties include eggs Benedict and gravity-defying lemon-ricotta hotcakes. If you fall in love with Pittsboro — it’s one of my adopted hometowns — you can stay a night in one of the three tiny-house-style buildings offered as rooms at the inn.

From there, head to Millstone Creek Orchards between Ramseur and Siler City before the sun gets too high.

I had never been to this U-Pick farm, so I didn’t know they had raspberries and missed their season. I have set an alert on my Google calendar for next year. Meanwhile, blackberries were falling off the vines, and peaches and blueberries were about to come in. The farm has a range of crops so that there is something to gather all the way into apple season in the fall.

This would be a beautiful place to spend a steamy summer morning even without the promise of sun-warmed fruit. The farm has a shop that sells fresh baked goods, and there are picnic tables and children’s play areas and organized “adventures” built around agrarian enterprises. The day I went, the first pound of berries was free, and they didn’t even count the ones I ate in the field.

Extra points for this valuable instruction from the lady who gave me my bucket: If you tap the vines and jump back, the June bugs will fly off and you can pick without getting a green carapace to the face.

Plan ahead for a Johnson’s burger

An hour of farm labor, however recreational, will gin up an appetite, and N&O photographer and Siler City native Robert Willett would be disappointed in you if you didn’t go straight to Johnson’s Drive-In to satisfy it. I have tried to eat at Johnson’s for years, but their hours are truncated: they open at 10 and close at 2 or whenever they run out of bread.

I’m told Johnson’s has served the best cheeseburgers in North Carolina since it opened in 1946, and one day I will find out. When I stopped this time, they were open but slammed. They’re not allowing people inside, so I waited in line in the narrow strip of shade against the wall.

When I got to the counter, I proved my not-from-around-here status by having no idea what to order. I had to step out of line like somebody going through airport security for the first time since 1973, look at a menu stuck way over there, and come back to say, cheeseburger, all the way, fries and a Pepsi. Duh.

I handed the man my debit card, and he threw his hands in the air like I had pointed a gun. They don’t take cards. Miraculously, I had cash, but then he said, “Also, it’ll be about 30 minutes to get your food.”

It was 93 degrees, there were no shade trees, umbrellas or seats and with gas still over $4 a gallon I couldn’t in good conscience sit in the car with the A/C running.

As I walked away, a kind regular chased me down to say that next time, I should go to Johnson’s Drive-In’s Facebook page, where you can place an order and put it on your card, then pick up the food at the window like you know what you’re doing.

Willett also recommends Crossroads Grill and Chris’s Drive-In.

Good porch, good wine

In a strip shopping center nearby is Ebenezer’s Attic, a thrift store that benefits Ebenezer Christian Children’s Home for neglected and abused kids. If you got blackberry juice stains on your shirt at the U-Pick farm, it’s a good place to pick up a more presentable one.

That way you won’t feel underdressed when you walk into the airy lodge at Fireclay Cellars, a winery on a lovely slope at the back of a residential subdivision in Siler City. A friend met me there and on the host’s recommendation, we ordered glasses of the winery’s 2020 Sweet Traminette, which we enjoyed on a wide breeze-blown porch overlooking the orchard.

Despite the fact that North Carolina has about 175 vineyards, I know almost nothing about wine. But I know a lot about porches and that’s a very fine one on which to catch up with a dear friend.

From the winery, drive 15 miles east to the Old Bynum Bridge and park in the small lot near 413 Bynum Road. Don’t park at the Bynum Beach Haw River Access Area on the other end of the bridge because it annoys local property owners and they have tow-truck drivers in the contact lists on their phones.

A historic bridge and great music

This bridge is a piece of North Carolina transportation history. It was built to state-of-the-art specifications in 1922 and 1923 using funds from the Doughton-Conner-Bowie Act of 1921, the state’s first highway bond package and the very beginning of North Carolina’s journey to become “The Good Roads State.” When built, it carried U.S. 501 across the Haw River between Pittsboro and Chapel Hill.

Thru-traffic was moved to a new, wider bridge in 1952, and the original 1.5-lane bridge continued to serve local traffic until it was closed to vehicles in 1999. Now it’s a pedestrian crossing, photo op and concrete canvas for graffiti artists. Some markings suggest weddings have been held there.

Old Bynum Bridge was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2020 and, at 806 feet, is the longest remaining T-span concrete bridge in the state.

If you happen to go there on a Friday evening through Sept. 2, stick around for live music put on by Bynum Front Porch at the General Store (950 Bynum Road) that served the 19th-century cotton mill village. The non-profit also could use some help putting on events and sprucing up the old store building.

If time allows, noodle around the shops and microbreweries of Pittsboro, both downtown and at The Plant/Chatham Beverage District. I never go to Pittsboro without stopping to admire the metal sculptures in the yard and touching the imported cotton prints at French Connections, and getting a great wood-fired pizza at The MOD or a grilled pimento cheese sandwich at S&T’s Soda Shoppe. A slice of tomato costs extra. It’s worth it.

Seeking higher ground

For this trip, you’ll need hiking or walking shoes, a blanket or beach chairs and a summer Saturday if you want to do the whole shebang.

Start by driving to Occoneechee Mountain State Natural Area in Hillsborough, a unit of the N.C. State Parks, for a hike. I failed to follow instructions to arrive in the relative cool of an early July morning, starting instead at almost noon and paying the price in sweat. But I live for the heat of summer and just took along extra water and a pack of Nabs and it was fine.

If you’re fussy about restrooms, stop somewhere before you get to the site, which has a pit toilet that is as pleasant as those can be made.

The loop trail will take you near the summit and to an overlook where you can see the sheer face left from when this was a rock quarry and, in the distance, the flicker of the Eno River. The first half mile is so close to I-85 you can hear and sometimes see the cars, but eventually you get far enough into the woods that your own breathing is louder than the traffic.

After the overlook, I planned to hike down to the river and was advised by a guy on the trail to take a left at a nearby fork and follow it all the way down. I ended up on a stumbly, rocky high-power-transmission line right-of-way, and though I knew I was headed toward the river, I also felt destined for a spectacular tumble and a helicopter life flight. I turned around.

Better to follow the blazed trails. Hint: if you end up in direct sunshine on a path that leads between the legs of a power tower, you missed a turn.

Not counting where I went off-map, it would be a stretch to call the Occoneechee Mountain trail a strenuous hike. But if you prefer something with fewer trippy roots and less change in elevation, walk instead on the Historic Occoneechee Speedway Trail in Hillsborough.

Originally a horse track on the estate of tobacco magnate Julian Carr (of the racist Silent Sam statue dedication speech fame), it was later used by NASCAR and is the only dirt track remaining from the organization’s inaugural year, 1949. It operated until September 1968, when Richard Petty won the last race.

Including the track, there are four miles of trails. Take bug spray; in summer, the mosquitoes can be as aggressive as stock car driver Junior Johnson on a moonshine run.

Classic American brick

After a cooldown in the car and lunch from The Dog House on Boone Square Street, explore the shops of downtown Hillsborough and make a stop at Ayr Mount, an 1815 home built for local merchant William Kirkland. It was significant for its time because it was built of brick, not wood, and it’s said to have inspired the boom in brick building that followed in town.

It’s now owned and maintained by the Classical American Homes Preservation Trust, founded by investment banker Richard Jenrette, who was born in Raleigh. The house is open for tours Thursdays through Saturdays, and $10 tickets must be bought online in advance. Walking the gracious, spacious grounds is free.

From Hillsborough, it’s only 10 miles via U.S. 70 to the two streets of downtown Mebane. Crafters sell their wares next to the farmers market on Saturday mornings through Sept. 3, and the boutiques, coffee shops and restaurants draw enough people to give the small downtown a busy, cheery vibe.

Have a pizza or burger at Junction on 70, or make the 25-minute drive south for supper in Saxapahaw, another former mill village.

This one has been turned into a little foodie mecca on the banks of the Haw River, with a butcher, baker, a bar and a coffee maker. Through the end of August, the village hosts Saturdays in Saxapahaw, with a farmers market that opens at 5 p.m. and live music starting at 6 p.m. Order ahead online from the Saxapahaw General Store and eat outside on your blanket while the band plays and the sun drops behind the trees.

If this don’t beat all

I can’t cite episode numbers from “The Andy Griffith Show,” but when I hear Earle Hagen whistling “The Fishing Hole” on the TV in my living room, I have to look in there to see which one is coming on.

And yet, until this trip, I had never visited Griffith’s hometown of Mount Airy in search of all the things related to him and the show.

When I did, I went all in.

I started with a Mayberry Squad Car Tour that leaves from the parking lot of a photo-op replica of Wally’s Fillin’ Station. Open seven days a week unless it snows or rains — an officer’s work is never done — the tours are conducted in a fleet of Ford sedans like those the automaker provided for the show when it was filmed on the DesiLu set in California in the 1960s.

And though air conditioning was introduced in passenger vehicles in 1955, none of the touring squad cars have that luxury. So if you go in the summer, get a morning booking before the seats get too hot.

Roger, my driver, was a friendly and knowledgeable guide, though if you stay in Mount Airy all day and ask the same questions of different people, you’ll start to get different answers, all posited as absolute truth. Roger also was accommodating; there is no public restroom at Wally’s except for a porta-potty, so he stopped at McDonald’s for me.

We started at the North Carolina Granite Corporation’s Mount Airy mine, the largest open-face granite quarry in the world. More than 60 acres of the rock have been exposed in 120 years of continuous mining, and geologists say the stone they’re working is 7 miles long, 1 mile wide and 8,000 feet deep.

Stone from the quarry was used to build the Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kitty Hawk, Arlington Memorial Bridge in Washington and street curbs and monuments all over the nation, including parts of the 9/11 Memorial in New York.

Mount Airy also produced country singer/songwriter Donna Fargo, “The Happiest Girl in the Whole USA.” She was born in the Surry County town in 1945 as Yvonne Vaughn.

There are churches, houses and commercial buildings all over Mount Airy built from local granite, including Grace Moravian Church, whose pastor taught a young Griffith to play the trombone. The church is on the squad car tour.

A haircut at Floyd’s Barber Shop

We also drove through downtown, with Roger pointing out Floyd’s City Barber Shop and the storefront diner Snappy Lunch, where Andy suggested he and Barney Fife go for lunch on the show, as well as Opie’s Candy Store.

We went past the Andy Griffith Playhouse, the auditorium that was saved when the rest of the elementary school Griffith attended was torn down; and the adjacent Andy Griffith Museum, small but full of artifacts collected and donated by Griffith’s lifelong friend, Emmett Forrest. We parked under a shade tree for a few minutes near the last home Griffith lived in with his parents in Mount Airy, 711 E. Haymore Street. The two-bedroom homeplace can be rented by the night through the Hampton Inn in town.

When we got back to Wally’s, I went into the Fillin’ Station gift shop and the one next door made to look like the Mayberry Motel. I also stepped into the courthouse replica, complete with a jail cell.

Later, I went back around town with surgical precision, getting a pork chop sandwich at Snappy Lunch, touring the museum (including a bonus exhibit on Siamese twins Chang and Eng Bunker, who married a pair of Mount Airy sisters and made their home in town). I got a photo in front of the statue of Andy and Opie outside.

I even got my hair cut by the working barber at Floyd’s. Two chairs, no waiting.

The candy shop had some fun old-fashioned treats, but it was another 90-plus-degree day so I got ice cream at Whit’s Frozen Custard instead. (Since I forgot to stop at the one in Hillsborough when I was there.)

You can learn from my mistake and hit both.

A cabin in the woods

You might be ready to head home by now. Or, you can do as photographer Travis Long and I did, and head to Walden Cabin, a VRBO outside of Stokesdale that’s a replica of the cabin Henry David Thoreau built and lived in from 1845 to 1847 on property owned by his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson.

VRBO Superhost Jim helped his son build the cabin over 10 months, adhering to specs provided by the Concord Museum in Massachusetts, which has the largest collection of Thoreau artifacts.

The cabin, in a small clearing in woods behind the home of Jim and his wife, Rachel, is the real deal, with a fireplace and woodstove, a single bed with a tied frame, a sleeping loft, a desk and copies of the books Thoreau himself had at Walden Pond.

The cabin has no plumbing, but guests have access to one in the hosts’ house.

The cabin rents frequently in the cooler months, but Jim said Travis and I were the first to stay there in July.

No wonder.

As he showed us the cabin, Jim went around carefully lighting all the candles and oil-burning lamps because there is no electricity, either. Then Travis built a fire in the pit outside for photographic effect.

I don’t know what it is about men and flame. I doused all the tiny heaters inside and put a fan in the window to keep my aerosol can of bug spray from exploding.

Travis slept in a hammock outside between two trees, draped with a mosquito net but able to feel the air move. I had started out the day sweating against the sunburned vinyl upholstery of a 1967 Ford Custom 500 four-door sedan. I ended the day sweating in a reconstructed 1845 hand-hewn tiny house.

I fell asleep with my face in the fan, thinking: I could not love being a reporter more.

Swept away

The next morning — after yet another fire for photographic effect — we headed south to visit the Old Mill of Guilford, less than 20 minutes from the Walden Cabin.

I grew up in Greensboro, yet somehow never knew about this mill built in 1767 and still operating, though it grinds with electricity now instead of water power. Miller Annie Perdue gave us a quick tour and we loaded up with bags of grits, flour and gingerbread mix from the mill shop.

From there, we turned back north and headed for Dan River Outfitters in Madison for a trip downstream.

You can book trips down the Dan with one of several companies. I chose this one because it has a trip that puts in at Madison River Park, owned by the Town of Madison, not to be confused with the Mayo River State Park a few miles upstream.

Make a reservation in advance. The company offers tubes and “Trackers,” as well as cooler floats. We got one of each. The tube includes an element of surprise, because it tends to go backward. And without a paddle, steering is limited to what you can do by flapping your hands in the water.

The tracker has a backrest and a paddle. The float for your cooler is a no-brainer, as the trip takes two to three hours, depending on how fast the river is flowing. And though there is water, water, everywhere, you need something else to drink.

You can get drinks, ice and snacks at the Bi-Rite in Stokesdale before heading to Dan River Outfitters, housed in one of three buildings that opened near the river in 1931 as Grogan’s Motor Court.

Brenda, who bought the place in 2020, hopes eventually to reopen the hotel, but is starting by using part of the property for river running, an outdoor music venue and to hold a cluster of glamping cabins overlooking the water.

‘The Dirty Dan’

Dustin, our river guide, shuttled us a few minutes away and put us in the water at the city park, just below the site of the former Lindsey Bridge Dam, built in the late 1960s to create a reliable flow of drinking water for the town of Madison. The dam was taken down in 2020 because it was in danger of failing and because it was found to be keeping the rare Roanoke logperch from swimming upstream.

The dam was replaced with a series of weirs — manmade rock formations across the river with an opening near the center — that allow the river to traverse a drop in elevation over a greater distance than water falling over a dam. When the section of river at the park was reopened in 2021, the town said it hoped as many as 250,000 people a year would come to play in the rapids the weirs create.

It’s a fun ride, especially on a hot day.

As Dustin, said, “They call it ‘The Dirty Dan’ for a reason.” The water is often murky with silt, so don’t wear a new white bathing suit on this trip. Sunscreen is important.

Once you’re past the rapids, your speed and, eventually, your pulse rate will drop as you lean into your pillowy watercraft. Fish a drink out of the cooler and stare up at the tall hardwoods. Listen for a freight train on the tracks that run parallel to the river for part of the route. Watch the dragon flies.

Historians say that by 1828, the construction of canals, sluices and locks had made it possible for “batteau” crews to pole flat-bottomed boats as far up the Dan as Madison to try to get heavy cargo to market. The hardest you’ll have to work is paddling over to the dock on the right side of the river when you approach the takeout for Dan River Outfitters.

They have a changing room with a garden hose where you can rinse off and put on dry clothes.

After that, decide whether to have supper at Tiano’s Pizza or Rio Grande, both in Madison, and journey back home.

Coming up: The next installment of Cruising Across Carolina will be Aug. 17, when we travel to North Carolina’s northern mountains.

This story was originally published July 27, 2022 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Cruising Across Carolina: Mayberry vibes and peaceful waters in NC’s Northern Piedmont."

Martha Quillin

The News & Observer

919-829-8989

Martha Quillin writes about climate change and the environment. She has covered North Carolina news, culture, religion and the military since joining The News & Observer in 1987.