Exploring the Valley
Discover the hidden gems, local legends, and can’t-miss experiences in Black Mountain and the Swannanoa Valley as we dive into the perks of Chamber membership and uncover what makes this mountain town a must-visit destination. Whether you're a local business or just passing through, there's something cool waiting for you!
Exploring the Valley
How Tourism, History, And Volunteers Keep Black Mountain Thriving
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You can learn a lot about a place by listening to someone who has loved it for decades, then chose to serve it on purpose. We’re joined by Glenn Cox, a Swannanoa Valley local with deep family roots and a lifetime of stories that stretch from Atlanta summers to a full-time home in the mountains, complete with a reservoir view toward Craggy and the Blue Ridge Parkway that still feels unreal.
We also get practical about how a town like Black Mountain gets supported and seen. Glenn walks us through his nonprofit management journey, from Handmade in America to his operational role at Explore Asheville, and what it takes to build systems, separate organizations, and keep the work steady even when politics and funding shift. If you’ve ever wondered whether “Explore Asheville” includes smaller communities, we talk honestly about what gets done, how relationships matter, and why showing up changes outcomes.
Then we dig into the Tourism Development Authority: what it is, how occupancy tax funding works, and why grants and marketing support don’t appear by magic. We connect that to real results like the Sourwood Festival’s demand, and to the community side of the valley: the Swannanoa Valley Museum and History Center, exhibits that hold hard memories like Helene, and hiking programs that turn neighbors into friends.
If you care about Western North Carolina travel, local history, community development, or simply what makes a small mountain town function, this one is for you. Subscribe, share with a friend who loves Black Mountain, and leave a review telling us what topic you want us to explore next.
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Welcome And Meet Glenn Cox
SPEAKER_02Glenn Cox.
SPEAKER_00We're there.
SPEAKER_02Glenn Cox. It I am so glad you're here today. Glenn with two N's correct. Tell me what's your story? Where are you from?
SPEAKER_00Alright, I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia. My mom is from Swantanoa. She's a Davidson. So going back to the 1700s, the family's been here. She's not that old. No, no, she's not that old, but somewhere in the generations back. But she uh, you know, we would come up here and spend summers. I did vacation Bible school at the old Swantanoa Presbyterian Church and all kinds of things, you know, spending just a lot of time here since I was born.
Roots In Atlanta And Swannanoa
SPEAKER_00So if I've effectively been coming up here, giving away my age for 69 years. And uh, but I spent uh first 21 years in Atlanta, and then I ended up going to graduate school in Memphis, Tennessee, and never left. So it's kind of my adult life was in Memphis. I moved here 13 years ago, bought a family home and uh that we've been coming to for 20 years before that. So the same place for over 30 years.
SPEAKER_02Is that where you live now? Yeah, I bought uh the tell me about your house because I still I still am gonna invite myself over one of these days.
SPEAKER_00We have the only view over the reservoir from the east or the south side, I guess you'd say the mountains are actually running east and west in that area. But so we look directly over the reservoir up to Craggy and the Blue Ridge Parkway.
SPEAKER_02I mean, how do you land that? Yeah, you have a family that landed that a long time ago.
SPEAKER_00Well, they were looking at another house down Highway 9, and someone said, Hey, you might want
The Log Home And Reservoir View
SPEAKER_00to look at this. And uh and he said, I definitely want to look at that, and that's all it took. And that was it. They didn't have to build a home, and it's a log home, so it's a bit of a a pain for anyone out there that's uh has a log home. It's not a lot of fun sometimes, but uh but it's still uh it's a beautiful it's worth every day you get up and have that view of the clouds wafting over the lake and never seeing the tops of the peaks for maybe a week on end and things like that. It's uh it's quite a view.
SPEAKER_02Well, that's pretty impressive. And then your dad is from where?
SPEAKER_00My dad happens to be from the same town you moved here from, Cartersville, Georgia. Cartersville, Georgia. Yeah, so I did spend a lot of time in Cartersville as well as a little kid.
SPEAKER_02You're still going to Cartersville a good bit now.
SPEAKER_00I went, I took my dad back last year. We're donating things to the History Museum there, and we're finding continually finding stuff to donate, and is an excuse to go. They have some amazing museums in Cartersville, so it gives me an excuse to to do that.
SPEAKER_02And Museum City is what they're called now. Oh, right. I didn't know that.
SPEAKER_00Well, they're very high-end museums.
SPEAKER_02They're very Smithsonian affiliate museums.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I just did the car museum. Savoy.
SPEAKER_02I wish I'd I wish I'd sent you to my guy Tom Chenal there. He would have yeah, it's a great next time you go back.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02You know, he'll give you a different tour.
SPEAKER_00Oh, nice. It's awesome. Yeah, it was it was it's a pretty cool place. Yeah. Good.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Now, Cartersville, Georgia, we gotta love it. Go, go canes. But so you can't was he a was he a purple hurricane?
SPEAKER_00Played football and baseball. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Wow.
SPEAKER_00Those are the two, those are the two big sports that's and he moved on to Furman after that.
SPEAKER_02Well, that's good too. Well, we'll talk about that another time because that's that's got we've got other connections there that I didn't know we had. So that's kind of fun.
SPEAKER_00Interesting.
SPEAKER_02Anyway, okay, so so y'all moved here when?
SPEAKER_0013 uh I moved here in 13. Z, my wife Z was retiring from FedEx, which about one person in every family in Memphis works at FedEx. My son did. She was in IT there for almost 30 years, and uh and so she needed six months to get a really great retirement. And and so she came in June of 14 or May of 14, and I came in December of 13. And I had just gotten really lucky and gotten a job as director of a small nonprofit called Handmade in America, focuses on economic development
Moving Back And Building A Career
SPEAKER_00for artists and the arts in Western Carolina, 25 counties. And so I did that.
SPEAKER_02Then you worked for somebody else, one of our biggest sponsors.
SPEAKER_00We closed Handmade Down when the governor of the day defunded all economic development, rural economic development entities, and ended up going to explore Asheville, the Bunkham County Tourism Development Authority. Uh the the director in those days was Stephanie Wil uh Stephanie Brown. Stephanie Wilder owned Shivrogue and Frock Mountain. Right. Stephanie Brown. And Stephanie told me the board had decided to separate from the chamber. And so she knew my background is nonprofit management, and so she asked me to come on board to help with that separation, to work with the lawyers and others to develop the documents that are required to create a new nonprofit and uh and ultimately have to create everything, you know, human resources and all that.
SPEAKER_02That sounds like it should be easier. It's a nonprofit. It should be easier, but it's not.
SPEAKER_00You would think there would be a book somewhere that you know, you check off the things.
SPEAKER_02That's your next million dollars. Write that book, big boy. Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_00I'm done. Uh and so we also were relocating. So we were leaving where the chamber is right now in Asheville on Montford. And we were leaving that one, and we bought not bought, we moved into a space off of uh Tunnel Road just on the Asheville side of the tunnel. It's a complex that used to be an African-American girls' boarding school. Really amazing history behind it. Nina Simone went there. The brilliant woman from NASA and the the Brilliant Minds or whatever it was, that movie, she went to school there and has some really cool people there. So uh anyway, we went in there and a lot of other nonprofits and similar are have made that their home since then. It's a really cool little campus.
SPEAKER_02It is. Well, that's one of the reasons that I asked you to be here because the Explore Asheville, because of your time with Explore Asheville, you've been super helpful to me. You're one of our visitor center volunteers at the chamber. And it is amazing to me. I can pretty much hear everything y'all say up there. Sometimes I try not to listen, but sometimes I'm surprised you do hear what I say. That's right. Sometimes, yeah, whatever. But I try not to listen, but I I hear everything.
What Explore Asheville Actually Does
SPEAKER_02But uh but it is funny because uh Sophie, our new assistant, when she came the first week, she said, you know, everything you've assigned me I could do from home this week. Would that be okay? I said, No, ma'am. I want you to listen to Glenn. I want you to hear him because he does such a great job. And you know, beyond Black Mountain Swantanoa, and you're able to help people, but you know Black Mountain and Swantanoa really well. And part of that is your Explore Ash full time.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's a combination of sort of coming up here my whole life and obviously Explore Ashville. I did not, you know, technically, I was not in the marketing end of it. You know, I was in the administrative operational side, but I mean you're there with osmosis and you're in meetings, you're doing it all. And so the current director is Vic Isley, and she's been doing amazing things there. The Buncombe County, uh, the tourism development authorities got several grant programs. Black Mountain has benefited from several of those, and we're hoping a couple are coming down the pike soon. And uh they market us. There's a special Black Mountain page on their website that focuses on the the community of Black Mountain. I'm not sure if they've done Swantanoa yet, because I've been gone over four years, but you know, that's part of the Swannanoa Valley, so I'm not sure how they really doing a really good job.
SPEAKER_02They're getting ready to come and go on a tour. I'm gonna take them on a tour of, you know, the the we all do it. We all have our favorite places that we go over and over again. And I was telling them there's a lot of places that you don't ever hit. I'd love to come give you a tour of those places so that they can start to see some of them. But they were so excited, they were like, yes, we need to know what else is going on. So they're coming for a tour sometime soon. Uh, I need to work on that. Oh, cool. Yeah. Um, but yeah.
SPEAKER_00Another staff member there who does, gosh, she used to do all the website work and all that kind of technical stuff. And I think she's got a different role now. Her name's Elizabeth White. And Elizabeth lives in Black Mountain. Okay. So uh I was kind of, she and I were the sort of the ambassadors to Black Mountain when things needed to be brought in, talk to whatever. Well, we were the easy ones that could come in here and do things like that. But uh she was she was better at a lot of that because of her technical skills, doing helping people and so forth. But anyway, uh it you know, it works a countywide.
SPEAKER_02Right. And that's what I wanted you to also mention was explore Asheville. I I really don't like their name. I don't appreciate their name because it kind of makes it look like they don't care about us. And they do. They do. And they they include us in a lot more than probably probably than most people would think, more than I thought when I got here.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, your predecessor would sit next to me at every board meeting, uh Bob McMurray. And Bob and I, we've known each other for ages because of our family connections, but uh he uh he would just come to every single board meeting, and I believe maybe one other did, but I'm not sure because I think the other his successor did, but after that it sort of stopped. And I don't know if that was intentional or just kind of I didn't know.
SPEAKER_02Nobody suggested it. Nobody's that's the first time I've heard that idea.
SPEAKER_00So that's and it doesn't mean you couldn't still attend, obviously, because it's an open meeting. Right. But uh he would actually have a I do go to some of them on the table. You've got all of them.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Well that's good. So yeah, and I think that's the other piece is they've added like Chip Craig was on a couple of their committees trying to be sure that Black Mountain is included in things. And uh and and a lot of that when people say, you know, they don't include us, they don't la. I want to say, well, what have you done to encourage them to, you know, there's a grant that there's two grant cycles that we're eligible for that a lot of people in town are eligible for. And I've told them about the grant, like, hello, I'm actually putting competition against myself saying you should apply for this grant. And they don't. And so they say, Oh, well, I just don't have time to do that. Well, then don't say they don't do anything for us if you're not willing to try
Tourism Grants, Funding, And Festivals
SPEAKER_02and help them. They need to know what what you need. They aren't gonna just walk and then hand you money or help you.
SPEAKER_00I mean, you do spend a little time, you can probably get more money than you would elsewhere.
SPEAKER_02They have they do a lot for us. We have a contract with them. We're getting ready to renew it again this year, but you know, they are our premier sponsor for Sourwood Festival. They're also the they give, I think it's I think it's $50,000. I could be wrong, $50,000 in marketing that they, you know, check with us and go, hey, who needs some extra love? Who who is new and different, who's exciting and that sort of thing. And, you know, they call us. We were on WSPA down in Spartanburg, and we've been on different places just because of their connection and they think of us. And they uh we've already signed up. We've we're ready to be on there for Holly Jelly as well.
SPEAKER_00Well, something's working when you have what about 110 more applications for vendors at the Sourwood Festival than you have spaces for.
SPEAKER_02That's right. Exactly.
SPEAKER_00So yeah, things are working.
SPEAKER_02We did have to turn 109 people away this year. So we had a waiting list like 30 deep and and you know, people the week before. Can I get in your phone?
SPEAKER_00I had a call last Monday saying it can I is there a room for me and as a vendor? And I said, sorry, you're sorry about eight months late.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, sorry. Start watching January next year. Yes. But um, but anyway, they do a lot of really great things for Black Mountain and things that I don't know about. Uh you know, a lot of times I'll hear about it after the fact.
SPEAKER_00And so then tourism takes a beating a lot. When I was there in particular, it was really taking a hit. And I mean, but it's it's tough. I mean, it's a balancing act, but you have tourism or you don't. If you have no tourism, which we did not have back in the 80s, the town was boarded up. There was a lot of it, yeah. Yeah, a lot of it was boarded up. Yeah. And uh some people came in with money and started investing. The TDA came about in about '83, if I'm not mistaken.
SPEAKER_02TDA, telling what that means.
SPEAKER_00Okay. And we're the every pretty much every county in the state has a tourism development authority. And that's the other thing. We're not our tax dollars in general are not paying, you know, are not providing the funds for the TDA. That's coming from hotels. And when hotels are typically, you know, visitors and tourists and so forth. So it's not your money, you know, the as a resident of the the county, it's not your money that's developing this fund for the most part. I'm sure there's people that stay in a hotel or buy a room or whatever, but for the most part. Especially after Aline. And now that yeah, and now the Airbnbs are kicking in too. That's right. And we have a lot of Airbnbs in the Swannanoa Valley.
SPEAKER_02Yes, we do. All right, so back to Glenn with two ends. We have we have Z, we have a wife. What do you two do? What do you like to do when you're not volunteering everywhere? All well, tell me where else you volunteer.
SPEAKER_00We volunteer. Z is extremely active in Kawanis now. She actually joined it, which she hadn't done. She'd been putting off with Juinda.
SPEAKER_02I always assumed she was.
SPEAKER_00She joined it this year.
SPEAKER_02And she's Does she go to the morning group or the lunchtime group?
SPEAKER_00Lunch, typically. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02She needs to go to the morning.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. We're a lot cooler. I mean, she's up because she's a more early morning, so she's go with me. She volunteers at the thrift store. She's one of the co-managers there and keeps very active. She's there right now. And so I mean it's just, you know, if someone calls and said, I can't make it, call Z. Call Z. So she will do it quite a bit. And she, you know, the rest of her time is a lot of yard work. She loves working in the yard.
SPEAKER_02She also is a sort of what they call it, a PRN in in the nursing world, but we can call Z and she can come fill in at the visitor center too.
SPEAKER_00Sometimes she's happy to drop in and help out there and uh goes to the Y and you know, all that kind of stuff. And and so I'm uh I volunteer on Monday afternoons at the visitor center. It's my shift. And uh I am the board chair of the Swannon Valley Museum and History Center, been that for about a year and probably have another year of that to go as board chair. And uh we we've just hired a new director, as you know, and uh he's coming on September 15th. Yeah, and you know, right in time with the Center for the Arts, Black Mountain Center for the Arts has a brand new director. So a lot of changes here in town.
SPEAKER_02But Sarah's done a great job of being amazing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we have an interim director right now.
SPEAKER_02She's been I mean, she didn't just kind of keep the doors open. She did work. She did a bunch of cool things.
SPEAKER_00She's happy doing what she's doing and did not want the.
SPEAKER_02I'm happy for it to be a short-term thing. I mean, I think it I think it's fun to be the interim sometimes. You know, you can kind of do what you need to to keep going. You can do a couple of things.
SPEAKER_00You don't want to add or change too much because you can put a lot of energy into it because you know it's you know it's short-term. Yeah, it's not going to be there forever. So she's done really good work for us. We're happy that she could.
SPEAKER_02But your new guy is coming when?
SPEAKER_00September 15th.
SPEAKER_02You've said that already. Sorry.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, his name's Trevor. And he was with the he was the co-director or assistant at the Asheville History Museum, which used to be the Smith McDowell House.
SPEAKER_02Gotcha.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they changed their name. And our director that was here, uh Leanne, John. She was awesome. She is the new director of the Asheville History Museum.
SPEAKER_02I didn't put all that together. That's great.
SPEAKER_00Going full circle here. So we just hope Trevor doesn't take Leanne's job anytime. So stay where you are.
SPEAKER_02That'll be great.
SPEAKER_00And uh and now he's he's leaving the USS North Carolina, I think it is in Wilmington. Cool. It's the floating museum there for World War II ships and all. So he's been doing work there. I'm not sure exactly what. Well, that'll be fun. Yeah, look forward to. But he knows the history of the valley, and that's what's very interesting. That's very important.
SPEAKER_02Yes. And so Well, well, that's that's cool. I I gotta be honest, I didn't really go in the museum for a long, long time. And then I did go with Kowanis went one week, and then we took a tour. And quite frankly, I just was sort of disappointed in myself that I hadn't been because there's so much in there. It just looks like such a small little building, and there's how much could be in there? It was great. And and it inspired our new it's what is it called when you have the layers on a map, topographical map that was made for us that's in the visitor center, because they have a topo map that's on the it's not to really, it's just it's a visual aid that you can see the whole valley when you walk in the door. There's this really cool it's a tabletop sort of thing, but it's a big old table. But of all the mountains and the roads and all that, I just think that's cool.
SPEAKER_00The framed one that's up on the wall came from the visitor center. Yes. So it was here and uh just didn't have room for it anymore. And so uh even the plaque is on it that's dedicated to someone that I don't know who he is, but uh well that's kind of cool. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02But anyway, it's a really cool museum and there's a lot in there. And I loved Helene. I hate to talk about Helene all the time, but you know, we have we have another history museum in the valley that is the Presbyterian
Museums, Helene Memory, And Local Hikes
SPEAKER_02Heritage Center up in Montreat.
SPEAKER_00And they're the director of the museum, too. I know.
SPEAKER_02And it's great. Um, but they they had a Helene exhibit that was video, and it was as a person who lived through all of that, that was hard. It was hard to watch and it was it was tough, but it was good. And I want people who weren't here to see how hard and how rough and how what it was really like.
SPEAKER_00And we focused on the community side of it.
SPEAKER_02But that's what I loved is we could send people, we would say, you need to go to these two exhibits. When they would come in early on, you know, they all wanted to know everything about Helene. And we were we're kind of done talking about Helene at the office. Yeah. It's really a lot. Yeah. But but I would send them up the hill to see that. But I want you, when you're done with that, I want to be sure you go to the Swanninova Valley Museum because I want you to see what our community looked like. And that's what they focused on was the helping.
SPEAKER_00Our community is comprised of. I mean, the amazing stories of what people did during that period. That's what we really focused on. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And I think that's a good picture of your museum. I think that's really a good picture of the way it is. Aaron Powell, Jr.
SPEAKER_00And we have a similar one right now, the 250th anniversary exhibit, you know, following the whatever that term is, the 200 and a half years and uh stopping.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that one.
SPEAKER_00I work by that.
SPEAKER_02That one. We'll go with it.
SPEAKER_00So we have that going on, and so it's everyone from the Revolutionary War up that have sp that has been in the services and who have lived in, born in, whatever has a relationship to the Valley. That's really cool. Some really cool stories there as well. And uh it'll be up, and I believe our next exhibit is going to be Arts and Craft of the of the Valley. That'll be really interesting.
SPEAKER_02The other thing I love that y'all do that doesn't really sound like you, but it really is. If you go on them, it is, is the hiking series that they'll take you on. Um tell me about those.
SPEAKER_00We do member hikes monthly and we do the Rim Series hikes, which is, as the name suggests, is the mountains that surround us. Everything from, you know, the Black Mountain Range to the Swananoa Range and points in between. And it's pretty strenuous. It's a it's not an easy little hike out there, but uh it's really exciting. People they get a wonderful jacket from Patagonia, usually historically at least, after they've completed it. Very few people complete it in a year because of scheduling. You know, you just you're out of town, or you're this, that, or the other. And so uh but they are very proud when they finish. We have a little bit of I didn't know about the jacket.
SPEAKER_02Maybe I'll do it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's worth it. Maybe I'll do it. Yeah, I did the VHE series, which is the history series. And it's there's a couple hikes, but most of it is literally walks or even car drives. I mean, you know, they do the the uh Northwalk. Yeah, no, you get a jacket. For riding in a car. Oh, now it's uh uh vest. Yeah, yeah. Okay, yeah. That's still cool, you know. Still cool. Still very cool. Right. Yeah, especially when you're 69 years old. It's like I'll take an award for something physical.
SPEAKER_02Anything. Exactly. Well, that's really cool. No, I do want to do the hikes. That's always that's been my I I actually wanted to do them before when I first got here. I thought I didn't have a job, I didn't have anything. I was like, might as well do those. Yeah. But if you didn't have a job, I didn't have the money. So it didn't happen.
SPEAKER_00You don't have you're now able to buy them one off. You know, it used to be a series. And it was 400 or something, it wasn't pricey, yeah.
SPEAKER_02But it's not pricey, it's worth every dime.
SPEAKER_00But but as a girl who didn't have a job, yeah, and you build a bit of a community when you do it because you get these same people with you on these hikes over and over again. And then when a your good friend John Buckner was actually John was actually leading him up in through his 90th birthday, I believe. Yes, maybe chamber, but visitor center in particular.
SPEAKER_02And he changed the name of the Citizens Award.
SPEAKER_00Well deserved. Well deserved. And he and his uh compatriots, you know, the guys cronies. Yeah, they hold court usually at the Green Tea Grill uh for uh coffee, breakfast. You know, they they always brag about this.
SPEAKER_02You know where they held it this week?
SPEAKER_00They were in uh they were manning running the the entire festival, right?
SPEAKER_02That's right. They ran the whole festival in uh in the chamber building. They were in charge of that building. And they did a great job. They and they told me everything we've done wrong. Like things that are not on the wall, and things that are it was great. It was actually very useful.
SPEAKER_00So I know Bill Alexander joined them. I'm not sure who else, yeah. Oh, yeah. That was and so I'm on the board now with Bill Alexander at the Piney Grove Cemetery, which is the oldest cemetery in Western Carolina.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00And it's over on B Tree Road, part of the old uh Swanonilla Presbyterian Church. And uh, but my family's in there and stuff, and my dad was on it, and so I'm on it with Bob McMurray, who I mentioned earlier, and a few other folks. And so it's very cool. It's an interesting museum just to keep it basically. We're not about burying and whatever, we're about maintaining the property and trying to get uh some software going for the history of it.
SPEAKER_02Very cool.
SPEAKER_00And then the last thing I'm on the advisory board for bounty and soul.
SPEAKER_02Okay, I didn't love that. Very cool.
SPEAKER_00So I do that frankly.
SPEAKER_02We love Allie, she was on here one week.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's an amazing, she's an amazing person, and the organization is as well. And their their farm to fork dinner is coming up, I want to say October 3rd. Okay. And that'll be it's a great thing to go to if you like those kind of events, you know, amazing food.
SPEAKER_02Remind Sophie of that so we can get that publicized for us. So with through us, whatever.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. They've it's limited tickets. Anyway, I just got an email on it this week. So so they're just now putting it out there.
SPEAKER_02Well, good.
SPEAKER_00They didn't do it either la two years or one year, but they didn't do it, and now they're back to it. Yeah. So that's that's kind of my world. And uh Yeah.
SPEAKER_02In a nutshell. Not that you're a nut.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Well, I know maybe kinda, maybe. Well, um is there anything I didn't ask you or anything you'd like to give a shout out to, or anything at all?
SPEAKER_00No, I think we've covered all I can think of. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Well, I'm sure you'll think of 13 things when you walk in. Maybe store. I don't know. Well, I appreciate you being here. It's a good one. And uh and I really appreciate having you at the visitor center on Monday afternoons from one to five, one to four forty five.
SPEAKER_00And that's a good gig for anyone out there listening to if you like to engage with people, if you know the valley and like to talk about it.
SPEAKER_02Or if you want to, because you'll learn it fast.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you learn it. And it but it's it's fun. Yes. You know, it's one of those things that I might get off the others eventually, but I probably will stick around with this because I love talking to people. And so it's you never know who's
Visitor Center Stories And Closing
SPEAKER_00gonna walk.
SPEAKER_02I don't even know what to ask you. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I had a guy come in yesterday from Atlanta, did and I went to Wayuka Road Baptist Church as a kid, and he said, Did you know? And you did. I knew him. Then he then I said, I went to Chambly High School, did you know? And I did. And it was, you know, you get those small world stories all the time. And it's funny it is fun.
SPEAKER_02I love it when somebody comes from Cartersville. There was a guy who came in, I was on the radio there in the mornings for a long time, and not a long time, but a while. And this guy came in and he said, Yeah, I'm from this little town. You've never heard of it. It's in Northwest Georgia. I said, try me. He said, Cartersville, Georgia. I'm like, really? Yeah, really. And then he said, Yeah, I work for this little radio station. You've never heard of it. I'm like, try me. He goes, W B H F. And then so we started naming names, and he's like, You know all these people? I said, I worked there too. So it was funny. But yeah, I love it. No, I love the visitor. I love being in the visitors center, and I love when I get to be up front, I just don't get anything else done. Because, you know, even if it's not busy, you don't get anything else done. But it is fun, and that's where I started. I was a volunteer before I had this job. So anyway.
SPEAKER_00I think we've got a great crew that does it a lot of fun and a great process. If you can't make it, you put an email out and someone's always jumping in.
SPEAKER_02That is pretty frequently. We don't have that. I don't fill in very often, so that's good. Anyway, thank you for coming today. I truly appreciate you. Appreciate you being here, but I appreciate you more on Monday afternoons. So thank you very much.
SPEAKER_01Thanks for joining us on Exploring the Valley. Until next time, keep celebrating the pride of our community and discovering the magic of the mountains. In the meantime, you're free to move about the valley.