It’s not unusual to find many of the Blowing Rock inns’ owners manning the front desk. Here, Mountain Aire owner, Deborah McDowell (left) and manager, Donna Cantrell are at the ready to assist guests with check-in.
Blowing Rock’s Family Inns A Mainstay of the Picturesque Character of this Mountain Town Story by Bernadette Cahill • Photography by Ken Ketchie Additional Research by Ron Davis
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nd in October, when we close up, it’s sad. It’s all tears, in the family since 1978. These little inns today are not only the first lodging choice as if we’ll never see each other again. And when we do get together in the spring, it’s all hugs and screaming for visitors to Blowing Rock. They are a mainstay of the picturesque character of this mountain town, and each is known and ‘did you have a good winter?’” Judy Eckard of the Azalea Garden Inn is telling of life as for something special – a profusion of flowers, specific location, a particular architectural a keeper of one of the inns of motif, or special history. In Blowing Rock – those small hoA postcard of the Appalachian Motel, located on all, friendly family innkeeptels that cluster around the heart Hwy 321 in the 1950’s, now called the Village Inn. ers and atmosphere put them of North Carolina’s premier above the crowd when bland mountain holiday destination. and functional is elsewhere the Some of them open year-round; norm. others only for the summer. In these inns, each with its Judy is one of three sibdifferent personality, nothing lings, along with Sue Gill and is standard except the intanHenry Knoll, who manage the gibles that make an experience inn noted for the log cabin, unforgettable – the warmth of waterwheel and rainbow-flowthe people, the feeling of arered grounds on the road into riving home, and the personal town. The property has been 34
High Country Magazine
July 2014