LITTLE SWITZERLAND, ROMANTIC HEART OF THE BLUE RIDGE PARKWAY

I still feel like a newlywed, and I've been married four years. My husband has a way of indexing things I say about things or places that have a special meaning to me. Little Switzerland is one of many examples of the selflessness of my husband.

I grew up near the Smoky Mountains, and now we are not too far from the Blue Ridge Mountains. When I was a bit younger and lived closer, my best friend and I used to make day trips to the mountains on Sunday mornings when we should have been at church. One day when we took a mountain excursion, we went around a sharp turn, and there was Little Switzerland! There was no stop light, no town square, just a little place to get gasoline and inexpensive used books from the greatest used book store I have ever visited. We roamed the buckling shelves of books, stopping from time to time to scratch the big old dog who helped run the store (and needed help scratching some of those fleas).

Ten years later, I met and married my husband. Naturally I shared some of my favorite past activities with him. I did not realize he was storing these tidbits of information in his memory for later times.

Last year on a spring day, I started to sit down at my desk, but there was a white hand-drawn and very intricate map in my chair. I picked it up, charmed by the drawing. It said, "Destination Little Switzerland." We had a cabin for an entire week. My favorite place in all the world was ours for a whole week.

We made the drive, finally reaching one-way streets with drop-offs on either one side or the other. When we reached Little Switzerland, I was amazed! There was a Post Office! And the bookstore was much larger! We met Rick at the Post Office, got the keys, and we were on our own to find the cabin.

The place was charming, built from the underpinnings up by our host. He did the hardwood floors, stone fireplace, knotty pine walls, a huge deck, even installed a whirlpool as one of the bathtubs. The only thing he did not do (because of laws, not inability) was the electricity! I was truly impressed, especially when he said he had two more like this one and more on the way!

In town a nearby town, we discovered a store full of crystals and geodes, run by a Native American woman. There are even mines where you can sift through a bucket taken from an open crystal mine, wash through the stones by way of a stream, and find wonderful treasures.

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