Our Trip to Virginia - Part 1

At some point I thought I should start a new blog. Something about this blog just didn't do it for me. I started a new blog called "Bearing with the News" and it really surrounded the life of a family of Boxing Buddies I picked up at Goodwill. They were all Build-a-Bears. But as I started posting on that site, I realized that I was basically starting all over. I know that there are people following this blog and they were reading it at one point before I skipped out in the winter. So here I am, back posting on this blog. I have cut my loses with that blog for now. I might try it again but it will be a project for the children. I of course will have some help, but for now, there really is not much time. School is about to start in about 3 weeks and there is much to do around the house. But I'm not going to bore you with talk about what has been happening around the house. I have some letterboxing talk to tell you about. This has always been what I do best. And I don't have to try to hard doing it!

Of course there is so much to talk about, but I can't post it all today! Then I would have nothing to talk about tomorrow! So let me start with our trip to Virginia. This trip happened a week ago. Ya, I am a little bit behind in posting about it, but better late then never! So we went on vacation in Virginia to see some family in West Virginia. We left at 10pm Saturday July 25th. Yes 10 at night. I stopped at a gas station and picked up tons of caffeine, because I would need it and started off to Virginia. We had planned on stopping in Washington D.C. and use that as a mid way point. Kinda more than mid way, but it was gonna have to do. My garmin said arrival time would be 6am Sunday morning. Fine. We were on the highway and our venture through Hartford, Connecticut was very uneventful. New York City, uneventful. The drive through New Jersey was actually kinda pretty. Now I know that New Jersey is such a blah state and there really isn't anything to brag about, but when you are from out of state and it is in the middle of the night and all you can see are lights, they were kinda pretty. OK, I was tired. About 4, 4:30 in the morning, the sun started to rise as we entered Delaware and then Maryland. Things started to appear around us and now we could actually look at something better than the lights we had seen all night. We drove around the out skirts of Baltimore so we didn't see much, and then there was Washington D.C. We arrived at about the time the garmin said. Sunday morning in Washington D.C. is very very quiet. We had all the parking we wanted. We parked somewhere in the view of the Washington Monument and the State House. I guess they call it the mall!? I gotta tell you, this was my first time in D.C. and I was not impressed at all. I would have thought that Washington D.C. would look much better than it did. I thought it was really dirty. drove around a little and went to check out the Lincoln Memorial. he was clean! They were cleaning him the whole time we were there! He was everything I expected. I was now impressed.

While we were visiting Lincoln, we decided that we will go get some breakfast. This was the death of me, and I thought, the death of Team New Hampshire. We found a Denny's and had our breakfast. What makes this the almost death of us, I had been driving all night and now I am relaxing. Not a good thing. After we ate, it was on our way to Virginia. Still another 5 hours to where we were going! But it seemed even longer when I started getting tired.

So I pulled off the highway in Front Royal in Virginia now. In Front Royal, you can find one of the 2 ends to Skyline Drive. Skyline Drive runs north and south through the Shenandoah National Park. I decided it would be a nice drive with plenty to see. Plenty that should keep me awake. But that was not the case. We were on Skyline Drive for about an hour and a half. For the first half hour, everything looks nice. The views were amazing! After the first half hour, everything starts looking the same. The mountains might not all be the same height, but they sure all look the same. As soon as we could, we got off of Skyline and made a B-line to Natural Bridge, to where our campground is.

We got to our camp around 3pm. This was 5 hours behind schedule. The total drive should have taken only 12 hours. 10pm to 10am. With the 2 hour stop in D.C. and the drive on Skyline, and then the many stops to stretch and clear my head the best I can, it took a total of 17 hours. A little to much driving for me. We set up camp while the children played at the playground and then cooked up some food on the fire. Hot dogs and beans. We played a bit of kickball which was put on by the campground and of course that wore me out a little more. Bedtime came and so did the rain. And man did it rain. And man did it keep me up all night. I was not a happy camper when morning came. To be continued..........