World Famous Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel
Westward Ho ! , the theme of our annual trek some weeks ago from our beloved Eastern Shore’s sandy seashore to the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains in Charlottesville, VA. It’s a trip that, depending on traffic, only takes 3-4 hours, but it’s a trip that shows off the real beauty and diversity of Virginia geography as we drive from our saltwater-dominated Atlantic coastal plain through the Virginia’s rolling plain Piedmont area, ( think Williamsburg, Richmond, etc. ), and then into the gorgeous Blue Ridge area of Charlottesville and Roanoke.
A View From Carter Mountain, Charlottesville VA
( Westward still would place you in the Appalachian Mountains and Virginia’s famous Shennandoah Valley, very beautiful yet somehow we seldom go that far. ) Virginia certainly isn’t an especially large state but it has a diversity which makes getting a change of pace and scenery easy and fun to do. For some reason, it never ceases to amaze me that I can be driving on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel, watching rolling waves and seabirds just after breakfast and by lunchtime I can be sitting in a chair atop Carter Mountain, munching a juicy York apple.
Michie Tavern, ca.1784, A National Historic Landmark
This year, because of an especially busy schedule, for the first time, we made our Annual Apple Trek after Halloween rather than before, which like most things in life had its pros and cons. Pros were that it was quiet, no lines to pay for apples and Carter’s fabulous fresh-pressed apple cider, easy to find an attendant to get questions answered and a chair was immediately available to sit and admire the wide vistas. Cons– well, I really missed seeing all the kids running around trying to choose their Halloween pumpkins, the hayride wagons full of excited parents and kids, the bluegrass fiddles and banjos. In short, apparently it wasn’t just about the crunchy apples and the beautiful vistas from atop Carter’s Mountain, it was also very much about the infectious atmosphere of their month long October Apple Festival accompanied by the mouth-watering aromas of fresh apple pies and apple cider donuts wafting through it that we had been enjoying all these years. At any rate, before venturing up to the Orchard we enjoyed a late lunch at Michie Tavern, located right at the foot of the mountain and only a half mile from Jefferson’s Monticello. Built in 1784 as a country inn to accommodate travelers of the day, it is a beautiful structure, a National Historic Landmark, very well-preserved. Serving a menu of foods typical of the time and still popular today– fried or baked chicken and excellent southern style pulled pork BBQ, accompanied by black-eyed peas, stewed tomatoes, beets, cole slaw, mashers, cornbread, big, fluffy biscuits, etc. , Michie Tavern gives an authentic taste of what travelers of the time would have experienced. Lunch can be eaten inside or al fresco on their screened porch overlooking the propery’s magnificant woodlands or by the roaring fireplace in winter, it’s always a very pleasant experience. (www.michietavern.com)
So Many Apples, So many Choices At The Carter Mountain Orchard
Lunch over, up Carter Mountain we went. The apples were great, as usual. We normally buy a bushel each of four different varieties, typically Stayman Winesap, York, Fugi and Pink Lady, so that we can mix them together and give them as little “happy-apple-harvest” gifties to friends and family. A Pink Lady is an especially pretty apple, a very pale green with a large blush of deep pink on the side, quite crisp and slightly tart, one of my favorite apples, both a good eating and a good pie apple. But for applesauce, I think you just can’t beat the combination of the Stayman and York varieties with a few Fugi and Macintosh thrown in for good measure. At our house we love applesauce, unsweetened, chunky, flavorful, lightly laced with cinnamon, completely delicious with chicken or pork, and, I might add, so good for you. It’s hard to tolerate what passes for applesauce in the supermarket, thin, grainy, absolutely flavorless– must be made with mealy red delicious, the worst apple ever for flavor. But a big pot of three or four types of sweet-tart Carter Mountain apples, slowly simmered with a little apple cider, mashed carefully to retain some chunks (but not too many), gently flavored with cinnamon and perhaps a tiny dash of clove at the very end — now that’s an applesauce that we will drive 3 hours to get really fresh apples to make ! ( By the way, applesauce freezes very well, pull it out, defrost and it tastes almost as great as the day it was simmered off in the big apple kettle.) So we got some great apples, newly picked that morning, we got the fresh-pressed apple cider, delicious either hot and mulled or icy cold, as well as a dozen pre-packaged cider donuts. All in all, we had a great day. But ….. for Apple Trek 2012, I think we will make a point to go before Halloween so we can enjoy all the extras too — the yelling kids, the noisy hayrides, the bluegrass band twanging away and the aromas of apple pies newly baked, all the many features of the October Apple Festival atop Charlottesville’s Carter Mountain.
(Posted by Marlene Cree, licensed Virginia agent with Blue Heron Realty Co., 7134 Wilsonia Neck Dr., Machipongo, VA)
