Annual Maple Festival draws 30,000 to 50,000 visitors, transforming one of the state’s loveliest counties and its least-populated one into a bustling place.

Looking for spring, we drove into the woods of Louisa County, trundling through snow and ice down a dirt road and across a one-lane bridge. Inside a farmhouse, there’s a sure sign of the coming season: seeds.

VALENTINES The cards and letters start trickling into the little post office in January and reach full flood stage come early February. They will arrive in huge tubs daily from just about every state and from a dozen or more countries. The thousands of pieces of Valentine’s Day mail are sent to this out-of-the-way crossroads in Brunswick County for one reason:

Point your car away from Interstate 81 and drive into the fertile farmland of the Shenandoah Valley, past cows standing in fields and silos rising like monuments to rural America. Turn off a country road onto the driveway of a family farm, park behind an old barn and you will come upon a most unlikely sight: The world’s biggest bookstore. Sort of.