A Quick Trip to The Land of Oz

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Years ago we had a subscription to Our State Magazine as an annual Christmas gift from Clay's older brother and sister-in-law. I had a collection of articles I'd torn out and piled on the living room table as places I wanted to go. Over the years, the pile had dwindled. Last week the article on NC's Land of Oz was finally removed from the pile.

NC's Land of Oz is a defunct small theme park in the western North Carolina mountains. It operated from 1970 to 1980. All that's really left now is an amazing yellow brick road. Maybe that's enough. Now there are limited times each year when you can enter the old park. Somehow, this year finally everything lined up and we went online and bought tickets for Journey with Dorothy. We paid $43.37 each total for a 1-hour guided group visit and round-trip ski-lift tickets to the park at Beech Mountain Ski Resort for June 26th at 10:45am. As best I can tell, all available tickets sold out. We were surprised to see many out of state license plates in the parking lot that day. Who knew?

We planned a leisurely trip around the park visit with 2 nights at the Best Western Mountain Lodge in neighboring Banner Elk. We paid a total of $180.38 for the motel stay. It was a good choice. It was not only affordable, but clean, quiet and conveniently located for us. They had an above average complimentary breakfast buffet and sadly nearly non-existent free wi-fi Internet.

We drove up around mid-morning on Tuesday and it took under 4 hours driving even with a stop at Bojangles in Mebane for lunch. It ended up taking almost exactly one tank of gas to make the round-trip journey. I think it was about 200 miles each way. Plus we did nothing else but drive around while we were in the mountains.

After we checked in and unpacked, we drove to Valle Crucis and visited the Mast General Store complex. We drove back to Banner Elk for dinner at the Pedalin' Pig. Clay had ribs which he said he enjoyed. His half-rack came with 2 sides and he picked the collards and corn on the cob. They brought us a small basket of hot hush puppies with butter up front. I had the pick 4 sides meal which I found a disappointment. I really disliked the Brunswick stew which featured okra. I used the included slice of Texas toast to sop up broth from the bowl. The mac & cheese was not cheesy. The baked beans were okay. The baked sweet potato came with a side of brown sugar so I ate it for dessert and it was good. But, I can't give credit for baking a sweet potato. It was affordable.

We planned to use the Internet and watch a movie on cable TV that night. Unfortunately neither happened. There was about a 2-foot square section of one corner of the room that had Internet signal and it was weak, slow and intermittent. That was true of the signal in the motel's lobby as well. Needs improvement. HBO was the only movie channel and what they were airing we'd seen or didn't want to see. We planned to sleep in the next day as breakfast was served until 10am and we needed to be at the park's check in at 9:45am. Sadly, we didn't notice that someone had set the room's alarm clock for 6am! We finally gave up and got out of bed at 7am.

Breakfast was good and an extensive array of hot and cold items with something for everyone. We were ready to go way too early but since we weren't sure exactly where we were going or how long it would take we set off early. Beech Mountain is uphill from Banner Elk. They had a sign which stated that Beech Mountain is the highest town in Eastern USA. (I'd call it more of a village than a town, but who knew?) There was a poster at the ski resort's rest room which said it was 5506 elevation. On our way uphill to Boone (the nearest city) we crossed the Eastern Continental Divide right beside the Blue Ridge Parkway.  The sign gave that altitude as 3100. I guess I have misunderstood the Eastern continental divide concept as I imagined it was the highest point and water falling at that point would either flow down to the Atlantic or eventually to the Gulf of Mexico. I guess I was partially right, but Beech Mountain is a lot higher than the Continental Divide as well as Boone, Banner Elk, etc. I may be overthinking this.

The only part of our Land of Oz experience that was less than satisfactory was the dozen or so cars with us that couldn't figure out where to park. There was parking signage directing us for miles until we ran into a mile or more of terraces of at least 4 parking lots with no signage. They had personnel out directing cars when we left but that was too late to help the first couple of scheduled time slots. We used our extra time to visit the minuscule museum, use the restrooms and watch the ski lift start up. There was a free 25-minute shuttle bus trip to and from the park included  or like us you could add a 15-minute ski lift ride. It was a beautiful cloudless day with a cool breeze so the ski lift was a good choice. It was tricky and a little scary but we both enjoyed it. The park itself was fascinating as a long, strange, literal, yellow brick sidewalk. Dorothy's Gale farmhouse/storm shelter was pretty amazing. It slanted destroyed house we exited made me dizzy and it took some time to recover. That combined with the ski lift was almost too much! But the dead wicked witch of the East's legs sticking out from under the house's foundation was my reward! Love those ruby shoes! Where the operating park would have had a cast of characters in the park, today there is only Dorothy. Park workers in green polo shirts ride herd on the tour groups. They also assign parts to selected visitors to play the parts of the Good Witch, The Cowardly Lion, The Tin Man, The Scarecrow and the Wicked Witch of the West. They give them hats to wear and a laminated script and place them in the way on the yellow brick road. All our recruits played their parts with heart. It was fun and over too soon.

We left looking for lunch. Our target was Valle de Bravo, a Mexican restaurant. We'd driven past both. We stopped at the first one in Beech Mountain on our way downhill. While the sign by the road remained. There were hand written signs for a new Mexican restaurant in the space. It was not fully operational yet. It had handwritten signs stated the liquor license had come through yet, OK. They couldn't take credit cards, OK. They had only 1 worker available out front, not OK. After waiting a while without menus, we left. We went to the location in Banner Elk where enjoyed an above average meal. Clay had a combination plate with chile relleno and enchilada and I had huevo con chorizo. It was a lot of very tasty food and affordable. It came with chips and salsa up front.

We had the afternoon free. I think Clay was thinking of the suspension bridge at Grandfather Mountain but I balked. I remembered a visit with my grandparents as a child being unpleasant and I know Clay doesn't like heights anyway and I didn't want to spend the money for it. I countered with a request to go see the Linn Cove Viaduct a short distance further away. It would be free and easier while a greater engineering marvel. We got a rubber stamp for the National Park Service/Blue Ridge Parkway and an embroidered patch at the visitor's center. We walked a 870 yard trail to view the underside of the viaduct. We drove across and parked at the next viewpoint where we walked back to see it curve around Grandfather Mountain. I think we enjoyed it more than we'd have enjoyed the suspension bridge.

On the way back to the motel, on the mountains' hottest day this year, we needed a cold treat. We stopped at the only ice cream place I'd seen along our travels. Sugar Cream in Sugar Mountain. It was a tiny place serving 14 flavors of Kemps ice cream along with soft-serve and shakes. It was better than expected. Mine was especially delicious though I can't find my flavor on the website... Ripe Raspberry Chocolate Chunk. It was a dark burgundy colored with a deep rich raspberry flavor with small chocolate cup candies in it.

The last thing we did that afternoon was stop in at the Garden Center next to the motel. We were fascinated by the vast number of colorful poly Adirondack chairs lining the road out front! We liked the folding version and it was comfortable, but at 40 pounds each and $275 each, we weren't that in love with the colors available. Clay was concerned that the dark colors would get too hot in the sun on the back deck. The light color available was Kermit-green! We returned to the motel where they had popcorn off the lobby. (We didn't have any!) We both struggled to access the Internet. Clay in the courtyard by the pool and in the lobby and me in our 2-square foot corner.

We went out for dinner in Banner Elk again this evening. We went to Bayou Smokehouse. It was good food and affordable but we suffered a service failure that turned this into an unpleasant experience. What can you do? It was only our server and there seemed to be more than enough servers working hard and the tables around us came and went in a timely fashion. It happens.

Back to the motel for a final night. We watched a movie we'd seen before on TV. We made sure the alarm was turned off! We slept in even after Clay's cell phone rang at 5:30am with an unknown Raleigh number. He didn't answer and they didn't leave a message. We enjoyed a final breakfast and headed back for home without stopping until we bought gas on South Saunders Street on the way home. It was a good, relaxing trip.

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