On the way back from the
Primland Resort, I stopped in Mt. Airy, North Carolina for a quick lunch.
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| Mt. Airy, N.C. |
Mt. Airy is special in my home state because it is the late actor, Andy Griffith's, hometown. The fictional town named "Mayberry" from
The Andy Griffith Show, is based on this mountain town near the Virginia border.
Tourists come in the bus loads to experience a little bit of the South's "Mayberry." And just like in Mayberry, residents sit on the side of the street, and time does seem a little bit slower.
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| Just like in Mayberry, Mt. Airy, N.C. has a Floyd's Barber Shop |
We had lunch at
Walker's Soda Fountain.. Andy, Barney, and Opie would always go down to the drugstore for ice cream on the TV show, and Andy's girlfriend, Ellie, was a pharmacist in the store.
In reality, Andy Griffith hung out at Walker's Soda Fountain after school. This store has been a staple in Mt. Airy since 1925.
Owner David Jones has owned the soda fountain for nine years, and he does a great impression of
Ernest T. Bass, another crazy character from the show. While there, he had a table of tourists from Ohio laughing hysterically as he delivered from some past lines from the TV show in Ernest T Bass's twang.
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| Soda Fountain owner David Jones |
It' a great place to relive the good, old Southern days of time gone by.
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| My two enjoying a day of hot dogs and ice cream in Mt. Airy, N.C. |
I added a little bit of today's times to the experience by ordering a coffee milkshop. Not sure if coffee milkshakes existed in Mayberry, but they certainly do in Mt.Airy.
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| Coffee Milkshake |
We only passed through Mt. Airy, but there really is a lot to see including a great Andy Griffith Museum and some TV set replicas. I'm putting Mt. Airy back on my list to explore another time.
Also, it has one of the best toy stores I've seen in quite a long time. Be sure to stop in the Mayberry Toy Company. For more on Mt. Airy, visit the
city's tourism website.
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