L&D Ranch – Jake & Eddie’s Excellent Adventure 😎🐶

Last stop for the trip at my brother and sister-in-law’s retreat in the beautiful mountains in western North Carolina. This will be our second visit. The Dead Horton’s Tour was timed around the Highlands Motoring Festival taking place in nearby Highlands.

This Excellent Adventure has had some great visits to museum. I have been coming to this area since the late 90s and one museum I never made it to was the famous Firefox Appalachian Village and home to the phenomenal series of books detailing early Appalachian life in the area.

Highland Motoring Festival

We first experienced the parade that occurs the night before the show. I was excellent and some of my favorite cars were on display. Good thing too since they were not on the festival grounds the next day.

The next day featured the cars on display. There was a special pre-WW2 section which had some unbelievable cars! A real treat to see some of this older engineering and style marvels in such good condition.

The rest of the show featured several modern marquees: Ferrari, Aston Martin, and Porsche. BMWs were far and few. There were some interesting cars including a Shelby Cobra.

By far the most interesting marquee was Ferrari. The post war cars up to the $750K Green SF90 Spyder were on display. One guy told me they feature one marquee every year and this year it was Ferrari. I even saw a Ferrari F40 similar to the one I drove in Las Vegas all those years ago.

The Foxfire Museum

In high school, my girlfriend introduced me to the Firefox books. Her father was a mountain man from the Pacific Northwest, and her mother was a librarian. I didn’t really pay much attention to it, but it fit into the mood of the early 1970s.

The story is much more interesting now. Turns out it was about enabling the young people of this region to fit into a rapidly changing world of the 1960s. Educators and the students attending a local school came up with a project to interview their elderly forebears. In the process, they learned the skills necessary to survive in the wilds of Appalachia. It was right up my alley now.

The museum showcases both work by the students as well as preserved homes, barns, and other structures. Signs gave you a basic understanding of what was being shown. I especially liked the woodworking and tools. I also appreciate the fact that the museum is still working with the local youth.

The feel was very similar to the experiences I had at the Wright Brothers Monument, Mystic Seaport, the museum in Lancaster County, and Monticello. A fitting end to two great learning experiences.