Meadows of Dan, Virginia

 

Nice ride through some Virginia mountains

Wednesday May 13 2026

Moving day today, we don’t have far to go so we took our time packing up. We left the campground and drove the truck and camper to the nearby Planet fitness and exercised for an hour. I can honestly say I do not enjoy going to the gym, but it does make me feel better afterwards.

Leaving the gym, we saw it was lunch time so before we left the parking lot, we ate the last of the leftover Jerry’s pizza. Oh, the irony, exercise and pizza, what a combination!

It's a joke Planet Fitness!

We then drove to Meadows of Dan Virginia on highway 58. We got to travel on some of the new realigned highway at Lovers Leap. It’s going to be a great improvement to travel through the mountains.

We are staying at the Meadows of Dan Campground; it is our first time here. It’s a pretty basic campground, gravel roads and campsites, it has one bathhouse, a few pull-thru sites on the hill and about twenty back-in sites in a holler below the pull-thru’s. All the sites have water/electric/and sewer. We like it just fine; we don’t need or want all the fancy resort amenities. 

Site 18 at Meadows of Dan Campground

The way camp sites should be spaced!

After setting up the RV in the campground we drove about 25 miles west on highway 58 to the town of Hillsville. It is one of those places we’ve taken the bypass around many times but have never visited the actual town. Well, I haven’t, in her earlier life before the bypass was built Millie drove through it many times. She told me of the huge flea market that the town sponsors every Memorial Day Weekend and how it took an hour to drive through the small town. During our tour of the town, we could see they are already preparing all the flea market grounds. BTW, IMHO, Hillsville is not large enough for a Walmart, the result is the town has many small businesses. That’s a real conundrum isn’t it, if the town grows enough to attract the big box stores, those businesses will locate on the outskirts and the downtown locally owned businesses will die.

Hillsville Virginia Flea Market

Hillsville is at the crossing of two major roads in this area. Highway 58 runs West to East from Kentucky all the way through Virginia to the Atlantic Ocean at Norfolk. Highway 52 runs roughly North to South from at least as far as Beckley, West Virginia to Winston-Salem North Carolina. 52 is not the main route it once was as several interstate have carved passes thru the mountains, but 58 is still the main east/west route thru lower Virginia. 

Our jaunt today will take us down 52 from Hillsville to the village of Fancy Gap. It sits at the top of a long steep mountain pass with Mount Airy North Carolina not too far from the lower end of the pass. Mount Airy is aka Mayberry in the Andy Griffith Show. A note of interest is, Sheriff Andy would often tell his Deputy Barney Fife to hold down the fort while Andy was going to Pilot Mountain. Pilot Mountain is a real place, if you’ve ever driven up highway 52 in NC you have seen it.

Back to our trip, we came to Fancy Gap to visit the Pottery store there. There are two large buildings there, one is fabric and sewing notions and the other is home decorating art and art supplies. There is also yard art, lots of yard art! Minimal purchases were made.

Hard to find but worth the trip

From Fancy Gap we entered the Blue Ridge parkway and took it back to Meadows of Dan. Before returning to the campground, we stopped at Papa’s Country Diner for a late lunch.

It was still too cold to do anything outside, it never got above 50 degrees and there was a brisk cold wind, so we stayed in the RV the rest of the day.

Friday May 15 2026

We woke up to 40-degree temperatures again today, so we are slow in going anywhere. That’s ok because we don’t have any plans for the day, The main event of our stay here happens tonight. After it warmed up a bit we did take a short road trip up the Blue Ridge Parkway to Mabrey Mills. This 125 year old+/-  water powered mill is one of the most photographed structures in the USA. In recent years had fallen into disrepair, hopefully the owner (US government) will restore it.

Millie and me at Mabrey Mill on the Blue Ridge Parkway