Virginia Horse Center
This is a massive facility on 600 acres with eight barns that house 750 horses, 19 show rings, a combined carriage driving & five mile cross country course and campgrounds. There’s also coliseum that seats 4000 people. It’s about an hour north of Roanoke, in Lexington, Virginia, right off 81….
Roanoke’s Blue Ridge Parkway
You haven’t seen Roanoke right until you’ve spent some time on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Although it extends 469 miles, starting in the south at the Great Smokey Mountains National Park in North Carolina (go there too – it’s a spiritual place, particularly if you land in winter when roads…
Parks & Arts in Roanoke offers free family fun
This weekend, I headed out for the first of five events planned for the summer as part of Parks & Arts. It wasn’t what I expected. Parks & Arts is a series of free events held at parks throughout the Roanoke created as a “collaboration with the City of Roanoke…
Showtimers offers a cozy community theatre in Roanoke
Since so much of Roanoke is focused on outdoor activities, sometimes it can be a pleasant change to escape into air conditioning for a live entertainment treat. There are a number of community theatres in the surrounding area offering affordable entertainment with dedicated local talent, plus Mill Mountain Theatre (more…
Fantastic cheese find
One challenge in coming to Roanoke I didn’t anticipate was locating cheese. When you live in an area for a long time, you start to assume your reality is universal, forgetting other places have different lifestyle choices. Over the past 20 years or so, I witnessed a cottage industry of…
Roanoke Down by Downtown Music Festival
Saturday, I headed to downtown Roanoke with two aims – to check out the Norman Rockwell exhibit at the Taubman Museum of Art and to find Elmwood Park for free live music enjoyment. The Normal Rockwell viewing didn’t happen. I was amazed to discover museum admission was free for all…
The Roanoke Star
Also known as the Mill Mountain Star, this is a big deal in Roanoke. I figured it for a huge tourism stop with paid admission required, amenities on site and some fanfare surrounding the location. I was wrong. Granted, I decided to go find this landmark in February when snow…
