Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, October 30, 1993 TAG: 9310290198
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: BECKY HEPLER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
The need to be terminally cheerful as a potential drawback, acknowledged innkeeper Mode Johnson.
"You may have had a bad day, but your guests don't want to hear about it," he said. "So you have to strap on the smile and put your other troubles aside when you greet them."
That still isn't enough to deter the owner of the Brush Mountain Inn, Montgomery County's newest bed and breakfast. The rustic cabin hidden in the woods off Mount Tabor Road has been cheerfully open for business since February.
An administrator at Virginia Tech, Johnson was casting about for post-retirement avocations and an additional money source. An avid traveler, he had come to enjoy bed and breakfast accommodations. At Tech, he's a liaison for the Hotel Roanoke project.
Like the winding, climbing driveway to his cabin, Johnson's path to becoming an innkeeper was not a direct one. He attended a national seminar on B&Bs in North Carolina and got lots of good tips on starting and running an inn. With that encouragement, he began his search in Blacksburg.
There he ran into restrictive covenants that limited accommodations to two rooms within a home. He worked with town officials for more than a year, helping to come up with new regulations that would allow innkeepers to have up to eight rooms in their homes for guests.
Then Johnson started looking for the perfect large, older home from which he could create his own travelers' haven. In the end, he couldn't find one within his budget in Blacksburg, where he had laid his legal groundwork, so he started looking in Montgomery County.
Johnson doesn't count his time on changing the rules ill-spent. He gained valuable experience and joined four other Blacksburg-area innkeepers in a marketing cooperative to help promote their services.
If he couldn't have a historic old house, Johnson's second choice was the little-cabin-in-the-woods motif. His 20 acres snuggle up to the Jefferson National Forest, with a view of deep woods. The cabin is perched in a sunny spot where he would like to start a wildflower garden. "My neighbors said, `Oh, you're going to feed the deer, are you?' so this may be a futile effort," he said.
The cabin was built by Blue Ridge Timber Frame Co. of Christiansburg from a design of a house Johnson had admired but with several modifications and lots of personal touches. "I wanted lots of wood, stone and glass and a natural look," he said.
He is especially proud of the handmade interior doors with their Z-brace, wooden knobs and rustic look. His neighbor Peter Montgomery made them, along with the kitchen cabinets.
Each of the three bedrooms has a deck or patio for nature-watching, and the front porch is filled with rocking chairs. Johnson said the wildlife count includes deer, rabbits, squirrel, a red fox and even a bear, plus many birds.
Inside, a 20-foot stone fireplace warms the great room, outfitted with a game table and lots of books and magazines. The foyer is decorated with topographic and sportsman maps with hiking and biking trails highlighted, along with a newspaper clipping about the Audie Murphy monument atop Brush Mountain, which is about seven miles from Johnson's cabin.
One of the guest bedrooms, called Sunrise Room because it faces east, is on the third floor. The other, a suite called Forest View, is on the first floor.
The room is set up for families with a sleeper sofa, a dart board and additional board games, which makes Johnson's accommodation almost one of a kind. As a rule, most B&Bs don't take younger children, only a few allow older children and hardly any allow pets. Johnson welcomes them all.
"Not everyone traveling who enjoys B&Bs is retired," he said. "I've had a wide variety of guests staying with me."
An accomplished cook, Johnson relishes the "breakfast" part of his B&B arrangement. He offers several entrees, as well as plenty of fruit, breads and coffee. "There are plenty of people who don't care for bacon or eggs, so I try to offer a variety," he said. Long-range plans call for including dinner.
Johnson is giving himself five years to see if he can make a go of being an innkeeper. If he does, he already has expansion plans in mind, adding three to five cabins throughout the property and perhaps a dining facility. If it doesn't work out, he says he will have some interesting memories and an attractive house that works as a home and well as an inn.
Most likely, it won't come to that. Right now, during what is considered peak season for B&Bs, he is booked solid through November, as well as during Tech's graduation and several other weekends.
Johnson is registered with several B&B organizations, as well as with the Virginia Department of Tourism, which puts his brochures in the various Visitor Centers around the state. His inn is the only Blacksburg-area one that is listed in the second edition of Lynn Davis and Bruce Muncy's "Bed and Breakfast and Unique Inns of Virginia." All of this has helped to generate more guests at his cabin and strengthened his resolve in this new field.
"I haven't had a bad experience yet, which is pretty much the norm for B&B owners," he said. "I can definitely see myself doing this for the long haul."
Cheerfully? "You bet."
by CNB