We don’t have the greatest wi-fi out here in the country and it seems to have been particularly prickly today, so I am writing a short post just as quickly as I can pound this out.

I’m working on a very cool history project that today had me looking around for Hardy, Virginia. How hard can it be to find a town? Surprisingly tricky.

Hardy is big. Really big. It’s so big, it’s in Franklin County, Bedford County, and Roanoke County. This Bing map (thank you, Wikipedia!) shows its proximity to Roanoke. And if you look way down in the lower left corner, you’ll see Westlake Corner (that’s where I go to the grocery store, y’all!). That’s Hardy, too. Unfortunately, Hardy is an unincorporated community, so there’s no real town to find.

Helpfully enough, there is a Hardy Road near where we live, but the GPS didn’t take me that way when I went to check it out today, so that was even more confusing. I typed in “Hardy, Virginia” and basically when I got to a random spot on the road, the GPS was like, okay, Anne, there you go, I got you there.

I found this to indicate that I was, indeed, in Hardy.

And also there is a store on Hardy Road that’s called Barn by the Bay which is indeed a barn but there seems to be no bay anywhere nearby, although the Roanoke River seems to be in fairly close proximity as the crow flies.

This is going to take more investigation. And don’t even get me started on Goodview.