Last Day

On Thursday, the last official day of our roadtrip (we still need to drive back to Mass and return the beast), we drove from Ocean City, MD back to Stony Point, NY.  We opted to take the ferry across the Delaware Bay rather than the longer way around which would include driving on the notoriously heavy traffic I-95 and the NJ Turnpike.  We figured this way would be a little more scenic as well.

We started off kind of slow, but that was intentional.  We didn’t want to get to the New York City area until late evening, after rush hour was over.  We started driving up the coast and immediately crossed into Delaware.  Until we got to the ferry, the majority of the drive was through beach towns, with shops selling saltwater taffy, miniature golf on every corner, cheesy souvenir shops, motels, and just about every other typical store you would find in a beach community.  There were only a small few breaks from civilization when we crossed through state parks and other wildlife preserves.  Fortunately for us, this is the shoulder season and traffic was not an issue.  Had it been summertime the hour drive from Ocean City to the ferry would have probably been better than two hours for the 30 mile drive. 

Before getting on the ferry, we made one stop at one of the last surviving Futuro houses.  Futuro houses were designed and built by a Finnish architect back in the late 1960’s.  They are oval in size and kind of look like flying sauces, and they were built out of fiberglass and plastic.  They were designed to be lightweight and portable.  The houses were easy to assemble and they could be mobile.  The thought was that in time, everyone would have more leisure time to spend on vacation away from home.  One could pretty much pack up your house and take it with you, assembling it wherever you may be.  The houses could comfortably accommodate 8 people.  The idea was that the house would be mass produced and cheap enough that everyone on earth could own one.  Unfortunately, likely due to the oil crisis in the early 70’s plastic became very expensive and the idea never really caught on.  Today there are estimated to be only about 50 remaining of less than 100 that were originally built.  This house was pretty cool. We found out about it from geocaching and it appears that someone may live in it.  We pulled up next to it, checked it out and took some pictures.

We then drove to the ferry, which was less than 10 minutes away.  We did not have reservations but this time of year we didn’t think that would be a problem. We were right.  After paying for the ferry, we got in line and waited.  We somehow lucked out on this one.  There are only two ferries making the crossing this time of year and the crossing takes about an hour and a half.  We somehow arrived only 10 minutes before the next ferry was to depart.  Had we been much later we would have had to wait another 2 hours before the next ferry was available.  We would have found something to do because we were not in the mood for the NJ Turnpike and I95 through Delaware.  The crossing was pretty rough, likely due to the wind and the rain from the night before.  We ended up staying in the car for the whole trip, we just reclined the seats and relaxed the whole time.  This reminded us of the last time we were on a semi-long ferry trip in choppy waters.  A few years ago we took a high speed car ferry from Nova Scotia to Bar Harbor, ME.  That trip was not good.  The high speed crossing was advertised as 2 ½ hours (much quicker than the conventional ferry ride of 6 hours), and much shorter than driving between the two points, which at the time was 9+ hours.  On that particular trip we recalled that by our estimates, 90% of the people on the boat were getting sick.  Jackie recalled being in a stall in the bathroom.  She remembered people coming in, seeing no empty stalls and just getting sick in the sinks and on the floor.  This was one of the reasons we stayed in the car this time, we did not want to witness any of that.  Once we arrived at Cape May, NJ we were hungry.  We headed for a small deli where we got a chicken parm sandwich and a roast chicken with gorgonzola cheese and roasted peppers sandwich.  We took the sandwich out to a place in Cape May called sunset beach.  Sunset beach is somewhat unique in that it is one of the few places on the east coast where you can watch the sun set over water.  Also at Sunset Beach, is an old shipwreck just off the coast.  You can see the ship sitting there in the water, right where it rested in 1926.  The ship was originally built as an experimental ship during World War I.  After several trans-Atlantic trips it was found to be impractical for its intended use.  The ship was sold and was going to be used as a ferry dock in Cape May.  During a storm in 1926 the ship broke free of its moorings and came to rest about 150 feet off of Sunset Beach, where it remains to this day.  While we were taking pictures and elderly gentleman who was sitting in his car approached Chris with a picture of the boat taken in 1926.  We don’t think that he took the picture, but we suspect he may have been alive to see the boat back when it was afloat.  We took a picture of his picture for all to see.

Besides the sunken ship you can see the very choppy waters.

Sunset Beach is also unique in that you can find “Cap May Diamonds” washed up on the beach there.  Cape May Diamonds are quartz pebbles found on the beaches are pieces of rocks that are thought to have originated in the upper Delaware River (upstate NY).  The rocks fall into the river and are washed down and worn smooth in the process.  Some scientists claim that that this process of the rocks washing down the river takes thousands of years.  The rocks are all over the place and are really nice looking.  We actually collected a large shopping bag full.  Who knows what we will do with those rocks.

After leaving Cape May we started our drive home.  The quickest way would be to jump on the Garden State Parkway and drive about 3 hours north into Rockland County, NY where our pets were waiting for us.  But if we left at this time, roughly 4 PM, we would surely hit traffic further up.  So we attempted to go to a winery and a brewery.  We walked into the winery and the person working there was extremely rude, so we left without trying anything.  That’s too bad for them because we would have certainly bought more than 2 bottles.  The brewery, which was located in a warehouse near the airport was open for bottling, but not for tasting or touring.  So we struck out twice.  We then got on the road.  Again, instead of jumping on the parkway, we took back roads up the coast until just south of Atlantic City.  We found the beach towns of south Jersey to be much nicer than most beach towns.  Instead of the cheesy touristy type stores, the stores in the beach areas were higher class.  Instead of motels on every corner there were upscale homes on every block.  We made another stop, again at a virtual geocache, at a shrine that has been maintained over the last 40+ years to a house that had been lost to a storm back in 1962.  Apparently after the storm destroyed the home (and every other home on the ocean side of the street) back in 1962, the family, who still owns the property today, built a shrine to their lost home and each year they add more “stuff” to the shrine.

Finally, we got back on the parkway and headed for New York.  We would make one more stop for cheap Jersey gas on the parkway, just because the beast loves us so much, it took another $100 worth.  We got to Stony Point and we finally cracked open that Rocket Girl that we had been carrying with us for so long.

The Changing of the Guard

Wednesday  we actually had a destination in mind rather than just driving and seeing where we ended up.  We planned on driving to Ocean City, MD, with a quick stop in Washington, DC.  Is there such thing as a quick stop in Washington?  We left the hotel a little later this morning because we would have a relatively short drive, only 230 miles and about 4 and a half hours, much of it on highways.  We were on the road by just after 10 and we drove for about a half hour before we made a quick stop to send a couple of post cards home.  We stopped in Markham, VA at the post office because it was really close to the highway.  We sent our postcards and we got back on the highway and headed east.  As we started getting closer to Washington we were getting hungry.  Unfortunately, there were far too many options.  Roadfood eateries were all over the place.  There were food trucks and even dozens of places from Chris’s TV Food Maps app (this app tells you nearby restaurants that have been featured on food shows such as Diners Drive-Ins, and Dives; No Reservation; Man Vs. Food; The Best Thing I Ever Ate; etc.).  We had too many choices so we went for something that sounded really great in Fairfax, VA called Chutzpah Deli.  Chutzpah is a New York deli just outside of Washington.  They have a 40 oz. rueben sandwich and they put pickles and cole slaw on each table.  Jackie got the rueben (not the 40 oz. version) and Chris got a special: 3 sliders, one pastrami, one roast beef and one corned beef, each on different types of bread.  We also got 2 black and white cookies.  This reminded us of a friend of ours whose father in law makes these in his bakery, but we’ve yet to try. (we’re talking to you Matt).

After lunch we walked across the street to a geocache (a virtual cache..no container, just a cool spot).  We found ourselves in a park which was at the site of the Battle of Ox Hill, which was a Civil War battle.  It was interesting to find this little tiny park right in the middle of strip malls and office buildings. 

We then drove to Arlington National Cemetery, where we ended up staying far longer than we had planned.  At first we had planned on just walking around and taking a self-guided tour.  But since we had never been there before, once we arrived we opted for a guided tour, given the enormity of the place.  The bus tour took us to a few of the more popular stops in the cemetery, including the Kennedy graves, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and the Arlington House, which was once home to Robert E. Lee.  We got off the bus at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and we were fortunate to watch the changing of the guard.  The Tomb of the Unknown s has been guarded by a sentinel continuously since 1937.  Every hour on the hour the guard changes in an elaborate ceremony, which one can watch during visiting hours.  We both found the ceremony to be moving and powerful.  We both agreed that witnessing this had been the highlight of our day. 

We explored a little bit more of the cemetery. We were surprised to learn that only two US Presidents are buried there (Kennedy and Taft) and by about 4 PM we were on our way.  We still had one more thing to do in Washington before hitting the road.  We also had a 3+ hour drive ahead of us still, not counting the rush hour traffic that we would likely hit.  We then drove straight through Washington to the Hard Rock Café which is located downtown.  We only had to circle around one time before we found a place to park the beast on the street.  Jackie commented that driving in the city reminded her of driving in Manhattan, which she is not a fan of but Chris seems to thrive on.  While Jackie sat in the car which was mostly legally parked, Chris ran two blocks to the Hard Rock to collect our souvenir magnet/bottle opener.   Once leaving there we were a little hungry again so we decided to take a look at the TV Food app to see what was anything nearby that sounded good.  In the Capitol Hill section of town there was a Mexican/Salvadoran restaurant that sounded pretty good and had been featured on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives.  They had featured pupusas, which are a traditional Salvadoran dish made of thick, handmade corn tortilla filled with some kind of filling, usually cheese, beans, pork, or some combination of all.  In addition to the pupusas, we ordered chicharron con yucca (pork with yucca), a corn tamal, and horchata (a rice-milk kind of drink).  We have had pupusas many times before and we were not all that impressed with these, we summed it up to the fact that the TV show probably made this small eatery into a more popular place than they can handle, so we think they prepare these things in mass quantities in the morning then reheat them as they are ordered, rather than making them fresh each time they are ordered.  Despite the pupusas not being the best we ever had, they were still good and we left with full bellies and leftovers for later.

We then got on the highway and sat in traffic barely moving for about a half hour before the traffic finally cleared up and we got moving again.  We were heading east towards Ocean City, MD where we would be staying for the night.  The drive was fairly uneventful until we got to within an hour or so of Ocean City where it started raining.  This wasn’t a light rain, this was the type of rain you might build an ark for.  When we got into Ocean City it was raining so hard that the catch basins couldn’t keep up and the streets were flooded pretty good.  As we drove down the road we were pretty much creating a wake.  It was that bad.  We arrived at our hotel, given the fact that it was raining and obviously cloudy as a result, it had gotten darker a little bit earlier.  We had planned on exploring Ocean City a little bit but with all of that rain we weren’t going anywhere.  So we stayed in and went to bed early.

End of the parkway

On Tuesday the forecast was again for rain.  We had been lucky this whole trip, staying in front of the rain the whole time, but it seems to have finally caught up to us.  When we got up you could see that it had been raining overnight.  While it was not raining when we started packing the car, it did start drizzling when we hit the road.  We again got up fairly early, we ate breakfast at the hotel and we were out of the hotel by 8:30 again.  We had planned on doing some more hiking today as well as visiting the Natural Bridge and completing the parkway.  We also wanted to get a good start on Skyline Drive, which is essentially a 100 mile extension of the parkway north, through Shenandoah National Park, and we wanted to camp again.  However, since the forecast called for rain pretty much all day we knew our plans would probably change. 

Besides the cheap night in terms of points, one reason we stayed in Lynchburg was because we wanted to go to the Natural Bridge, which happened to be at the same exit from the parkway as Lynchburg.  We knew that if we passed that exit on Monday we would have to backtrack on Tuesday to get there.  So we would start our day there.  First, however, since there was a Chick-Fill-A right next to the hotel, we decided to go there for more breakfast.  Not because we were necessarily hungry, but because we had seen some good chicken and biscuits on their menu.  So we got that.  This restaurant was drive-through only. They had dual drive-throughs and they also had a walk up window.  We had never seen anything like this before.  The Little Ceaser’s pizza next door also was a drive through. There must be lazy people in Lynchburg.  We left Lynchburg and started driving back towards the parkway.  Natural Bridge while it was at the same exit, was 15 miles west of the parkway, while Lynchburg was 20 miles east.  So we had a 35 mile drive to Natural Bridge, up and over the mountain.  We stopped almost right away for gas.  We still had more than a half tank but we couldn’t pass up the $3.39 per gallon.  On the gas buddy app we had seen $3.29 per gallon in Lynchburg was it was in the wrong direction.  We got to the parkway pretty quickly, maybe in 25 minutes, then we started the 15 mile drive to Natural Bridge.  The road had many twists and turns, and was very hilly.  While the speed limit was technically 55 you would have trouble safely maintaining 40.  We were not so lucky.  We had a log truck in front of us.  Now if you’ve ever been stuck behind a heavy truck on a long steep incline with no passing possible, you know they go slow and it can be maddening.   If you’ve ever been behind a heavy truck on a twisty mountain road going downhill, they drive even slower, in their lowest gear which probably doesn’t allow the truck to go faster than about 10 mph.  We have been seen all kinds of trucks in our travels and we’ve been behind them all.  We are pretty sure log trucks are the heaviest trucks out there.  They are probably as heavy or heavier than trucks full of stone of a truck carrying an oversized bulldozer.  In addition to that the logs are usually haphazardly stacked in such a way that you know if they take a turn too fast there will be trees everywhere.  Combine all of those factors and they do not drive very fast.  We can tell you exactly how fast they drive.  8 MPH.  That is what we watched our speedometer do for most of those 15 miles.  For most of the drive we were the second car behind the truck.  The car in front us, a pickup truck, couldn’t take it anymore, and he easily passed the log truck on a blind turn.  He probably had to get us truck up to maybe 20 miles an hour to easily pass him.  We didn’t want to chance it as we did not know those roads.  Chris did consider passing him on the right at one of the few gravel pulloffs they had, but we thought better of it.  Finally, we turned off, about 2 miles before Natural Bridge.

Natural Bridge is a tourist trip in central Virginia just off of I-81.  But it is a cool tourist trap.  It is a geological feature where a creek has carved a path through the rocks over the years (millions of years) and has left a huge gorge, or canyon through the rocks.  The cool part is, at one point a natural bridge has been left behind, so the river, or creek, flows through this really tall tunnel.  What makes this even more interesting, is up on top of that natural rock bridge, which is about 200 feet high and only 80 feet or so wide, US 11 travels right over it.  This place has been a tourist trap forever.  According to Wikipedia, Natural Bridge was one of the wonders of the new world that Europeans visited during the 18th and 19th centuries.  Vacationing guests from all over the world took day trips from Natural Bridge on horseback or horse drawn carriages to explore the countryside.  They even built a hotel there.  To this day there is still a hotel. There is also a zoo, a wax museum, a very large gift shop and right up the road there is a cave of some sort that you can pay money to see.  We only went to Natural Bridge today.  We skipped the zoo and cave and wax museum.  The bridge was really cool.  The pictures we took don’t really do it justice.  We spent some time at this park where they also had an exhibit called Monacan Village, which depicted a Native American village from around the year 1700.  We found a pretty cool geocache hidden in the parking lot as well.  Uncle Tony will like this one.

After leaving Natural Bridge we headed back to the parkway.  We stopped at the James River, which is the lowest point on the parkway at just over 600 feet.  We walked across the river on a pedestrian bridge built under the highway bridge and enjoyed the peacefulness for awhile before heading on.  Besides, it was nice to get out of the rain while we were under the highway bridge.  Like yesterday, we had planned on taking many side trips along the route but the rain was coming down all day long and at times it got VERY foggy.  There were times where you could not see 20 feet in front of the car.  Luckily there were very few cars on the parkway again today. 

We did stop for one more short hike.  There was an exhibit on the side of the parkway on logging railroads that were used in the mountains in the 1800’s. They even had a small section of track still in place.  Chris checked out the builders’ stamp on the side of the train tracks and noticed that they were built in 1881.  We checked out the old logging railroad and then walked up the hill to a small waterfall.  We then went back to the car and started driving again. 

By this time we realized that with all of this rain we would not be driving on Skyline Drive, despite the woman’s advice to Jackie yesterday.  Wednesday’s forecast for Shenandoah National Park was a 90% chance of rain in the park so we would do this another time.  By now it was about 3:30 and we were hungry.  We hadn’t really eaten since breakfast.  We got onto I-64 at Rockfish Gap, which is where the Blue Ridge Parkway ends and Skyline Drive begins.  We noticed what we think were Appalachian Trail thru-hikers (hikers who hike the entire trail, from Georgia to Maine, all in one shot) at Rockfish Gap.  They must not be having fun, walking in the rain with 40 pounds on their back.  We headed for Staunton, VA, where there was a roadfood eatery which sounded good.  When we got to Staunton we noticed that we had already been to this particular restaurant, which was a 50’s style drive up restaurant with car-hop service.  Since we had been there before we opted for something else.  Jackie noticed on foursquare a list of good restaurants in Staunton, or at least one users’ favorite restaurants.  There was a German restaurant, Edelweiss, not too far away so we were there.  The food was great.  Jackie got weinerschnitzel and a little beer.  While the beer was regular sized, next to Chris’s it was little.  Next to Chris’s beer, our pitcher of water was small too.  Chris, besides getting a big German beer, got a combination plate, which included weinerschnitzel, Jagerschnitzel, Sauerbraten, some kind of Goulash, and another dish which we can’t remember what it was called.  We also had all you can eat green beans, red and white cabbages and spaetzle.  We split a pretzel and Bavarian dumplings.  When we were done we were comfortably full and very satisfied.    We then drove to our hotel, which tonight was going to be in Strasburg, VA.

Always Lock your Hotel Room

Yesterday’s plan worked.  We were up and ready to go by 8:30.  Before leaving we paid a quick visit to the owner of the caboose property.  Chris was interested in knowing how much it cost to buy and set up a caboose.  We definitely don’t have the property at home for a caboose but maybe someday we will.  Then we heard the price so maybe we won’t.  The expensive part seems to be not so much purchasing the caboose, but having it transported to your property and set up.  He said the shipping along can run $10-$12K.  Chris had read someplace once that the total cost can be somewhere in the $20-$30K range, but that was a few years ago.  The caboose hotel was a few miles off of the parkway so for a change of scenery we took a different route back to the parkway than we drove in on.  As we were driving we got a good picture of one of those lonely back roads in the morning light.

We had planned on stopping at the Marby Mill for breakfast.  The mill was only a few miles up the parkway and we were there before 9.  We were lucky to get there when we did because the restaurant was tiny, maybe only a dozen or so tables.  Once we were served our food a bus load of senior citizens pulled up and they were all hungry too.  Had we arrived only 10 minutes later we would have had to wait.  We both ordered a pancake sampler because first, we were in the mood for pancakes, second, we had kept reading about their buckwheat pancakes, and third, they also had sweet potato pancakes, which we had not been expecting.  The sampler had those two plus a cornmeal pancake.  We each got freshly baked biscuits as well.  After eating, we took a walk around the area of the mill.  They had several displays set up describing rural life in Appalachia.  There was a grist mill complete with flume for diverting water from a steam, a blacksmith shop, several cabins, a bunch of tools that were used 100 years ago, plus a moonshine still.  Marby Mill is no longer functioning like the last grist mill we stopped by, but apparently, it is one of the most photographed places in Virginia, so we took a picture as well.

After leaving the mill, we headed back 2 miles on the parkway to visit a store that we had read about in one of the guidebooks we picked up called Poor Farmers Farm.  The store was about 5 miles off of the parkway and it sold country type gifts along with samples of fudge and local produce.  Just before we got to where the directions told us the store should be located, we hit some of the worst fog we had ever seen before.  As a result, we ended up driving right past the store, even though we were looking for it.  We drove for a couple of more miles until we saw some signs for “Lovers Leap”.  This was a huge cliff with a pull off right on top.  By this time the fog had cleared enough to see a few about a hundred yards on front of us, which was too bad because the view was probably really good from there.  We did see an interesting sign warning motorists and people picnicking about bears in the area.  We then backtracked; hit the bad fog again but this time found the store.  We only bought a mailbox cover and we browsed for a little bit.

We got back to the parkway and headed north.  When we passed the mill again, which was now about an hour and a half later than we originally stopped for breakfast, the bus was still there.  We were still glad we got there ahead of the bus.

After passing the mill we only had to drive another 5 miles before we turned off again, this time for a winery.  We stopped at the Chateau Morrisette winery, which was a mile or two off of the parkway.  It just so happened they had free tastings, which we decided to partake in.  We were surprised to see that we were the only customers at this very large winery, but it was only lunchtime and it was also mid-week.  This time we only sampled three wines each, as the more extensive tasting was $8.  We bought a bottle or two at this winery as well.  Once we left, a few other cars pulled in.

We got back on the parkway and stopped at several viewpoints, but the views were not nearly as spectacular as they had been a few days before.  It could have been the gloomy weather or it could have been the scenery, but either way we were making much better time.  The one interesting thing we did see at one stop was a field full of cows and two of the cows kept butting heads with each other.  The picture we took doesn’t really show them fighting, but it was still kind of cool.  The amount of traffic on Monday was also far less than it had been on Saturday and Sunday.  At one point about 2 hours into our drive we estimated that we may have passed less than 100 cars total in the 2 hours we had driven.  We did notice that at several of the overlooks we kept seeing the same car with New Hampshire license plates.  They were either just leaving as we arrived at some of the overlooks or we were leaving as they arrived.  At one particular overlook we decided to talk to them.  As it turns out they are from Walpole, NH which is on the Vermont border about a half hour north of the NH border.  They were a much older couple who were returning from Florida.  The woman was much friendlier than the man and she was impressed that not only had we known where Walpole, NH was, but we had been there and Chris could remember the name of the restaurant we had eaten at (it was a roadfood restaurant).  She gave us some tips for the next time we were in the area, which we will probably use since it is only a 2 hour or so drive from home.  Jackie was telling the woman about our trip, telling her that we had wanted to drive the BRP many times but we always ran out of time.  The lady gave Jackie some life advice: always make the time to do the things you want or you will get old and regret it.  Good advice we thought.  We let them be on their way because they had planned on being home by Tuesday night and they still had a good 700 miles ahead of them and it was already well into the afternoon on Monday.

By this time we were getting hungry.  We knew there was a relatively large town coming up; actually by most standards it would be a small city, Roanoke, VA.  The parkway actually went through the city limits so that was where we would be stopping.  Our roadfood book was warning us of a good restaurant in Roanoke which we had been looking forward to called The Roanoker.  The Roanoker was famous for what was described as wafer-sliced him: a plateful of prosciutto-thin pieces of ham dripping red-eye gravy with biscuits on the side.  We were looking forward to this.  As it turned out, the restaurant was only 5 minutes off of the parkway so we headed that way.  We got there quickly and much to our disappointment, the restaurant is closed one day each week: Monday.  So we quickly reassessed the situation.  Chris pulled out his tripadvisor app on the phone and we found a really good burger place right up the road called Burger in the Square.  They were no longer in the square, as they had relocated from downtown Roanoke to a strip mall, but they were still really good.  We had burgers with sweat tea.

After lunch we headed back to the parkway.  We next headed up Mt. Roanoke, which was a four-mile one way trip up to the top of a mountain which overlooked the city.  Since the weather was pretty overcast we didn’t get much of a view, but while we were looking for a geocache up in the woods on the top of the mountain, we did see a large bird only a few yards away from us.  We didn’t know what it was at the time but it was either nesting or hunting.  When we approached it took off.  When we got back to the car there were a couple of guys who were bird watching.  We asked them what it was we saw and after describing it to them they said it was a turkey vulture and there was likely something dead in the woods that it was eating.  We had seen countless turkey vultures before, but always flying, never on the ground close up.

We drove another 60 or so miles on the parkway on Monday.  We did not stop much since the views were mostly clouded in.  We got one last picture before getting off of the parkway.  Apparently there had been a forest fire sometime in the last couple of years.  Much of the woods were burned as we drove by and we noticed that the parkway seems to have acted as a firewall.  Much of the forest was charred on one side, while the other side hadn't been touched.

We finally got off the parkway at around milepost 60 and we stayed in Lynchburg, VA for the night.  We had driven through Lynchburg before on a previous trip but never stayed there.  We stayed again at a Holiday Inn Express because we have an un-Godly amount of points to burn and we can always get a good room with few points.  In fact when we use points, not all hotels are created equal.  Hotel Indigos for example, where we stayed in Asheville, charge a crazy amount of points per night, something like 35,000.  Holiday Inn Expresses can range from 10,000 to 20,000 points with the 20,000 point rooms being in busier properties and the 10K properties being in smaller, out of the way places.  From time to time you can even snag a 5,000 point night, which is just craziness.  So if you play your cards right you can potentially get 7 nights at a Holiday Inn Express, which are usually very modern and clean hotels, for the same price as 1 night at an Indigo.  We always look for these properties.  The Lynchburg hotel was a 10K point night, which is why we were willing to drive about 20 miles off of the parkway to stay there.

When we checked in, the fun started.  This is where the title of today’s blog comes in.  We were given our key and we went up to our room.  Both keys did not work in the door.  The doors usually have three lights on them, a green light which is usually what you see when you put in the key and a yellow and a red light.  We’ve seen the red light before; you get that when you put your key in the wrong room’s door.  We’ve never seen a yellow light before and we never saw what we saw when we put our key in our door.  We got a yellow and red at the same time.  So we tried the other key.  Same thing.  So we tried again.  Same thing.  Chris then got a funny thought: what if yellow and red at the same time meant that the room was locked from the inside.  As if we had the correct key for the room but the deadbolt was being used and the key would therefore not work.  So we knocked.  No answer.  We figured we must just have a bad key.  This has happened before.  It is kind of frustrating but it is not the end of the world.  We went back to the front desk, got a new set of keys and went back upstairs.  This time the first key worked on the first try.  We went in and there in our room was someone’s suitcase and someone’s underwear on the bed.  Luckily there was no one in the room.  That would have been embarrassing.  We quickly shut the door and went back downstairs.  The ladies at the front desk immediately upon seeing us laughed and said “don’t tell me the key isn’t working again”, to which we replied, “it works just fine but someone’s already in that room”.  Their face turned from joking around to “holy crap”.  They were clearly in a state of shock.  Now Chris collects business cards from places we visit and he was about to grab a business card just because they were there, but he figured he would give these girls a heart attack if he picked up a business card with the manager’s name on it right after they gave us someone else’s room.  So we left the business card there, they apologized like 10 times (we thought for a minute we should blackmail them and get maybe extra hotel soaps or maybe even points deposited into our accounts), and they gave us a new room.  We went to our new room, tried the key and it didn’t work!!!!  We tried the other key. Nothing.  We tried the same keys a few more times and finally the door popped open. Just for fun we wanted to see what would happen if one of us went outside and tried to open the door while it was deadbolted from the inside.  We did, and it was yellow/red at the same time.  So that first time there must have been someone in the room and while we were going downstairs to get our keys, they must have left.  Believe it or not, in all the travelling we have done, this is the 3^rd time we have been given a key to someone else’s room.  The first time we walked in on an open room, like today, and the other time it happened the room was not empty..the person was in the shower.  We immediately shut the door and we can only assume they never knew we were there.  We hope no one has ever entered our room while we were not there but given the fact that we’ve done it 3 times to others, we are sure it has happened.  So the moral of the story:  NEVER leave valuables in your hotel room and ALWAYS lock up when you are in there.   Those two extra locks are there for a reason, use them and you won’t have strangers walking in on you.

Slow start with a good ending

So we have fallen into a bad groove.  Maybe it is because of the longer days or maybe it is because of the later starts, but we have been getting late starts and travelling until late into the evening.  Travelling into the evening isn’t necessarily a bad thing but getting to our hotel or other accommodation for the night and then trying to record what we did all day is getting to be time consuming.  It is leading to us getting to bed late and sleeping late the next day, which results in us missing breakfast, or getting on the road later than we would like.  Sunday was no exception.  We got out of the hotel just before checkout time: 11 AM.  Unfortunately breakfast was only until 9:30.  Then we rearranged the back of the beast for 20 minutes because it was getting to be cluttered.  By the time we got on the road, all of the diners and restaurants, at least the ones that were open (this is Sunday in the South, nothing is open) were no longer serving breakfast.  We quickly realized this and knew we had to go for some lunch instead.  We drove around Boone and Blowing Rock, NC, looking for something that would inspire us.  All of the fast food places were open but we were not in the mood for that.  So we drove around town looking for something.  When we realized we were not going to find anything, Chris had already passed the entrance to the Blue Ridge Parkway.  Not a big deal, he thought, this road, US221, parallels the parkway for miles.  We can get on just about anywhere, or so we thought.  The road twisted and turned for mile after mile.  Usually Chris loves this kind of road.  He enjoys driving around the turns at probably higher than safe speeds, and he loves the views.  Unfortunately this road had so many twists and turns that you could never get over about 15 mph.  And there were no views.  It was boring.  It just twisted through a forest, going round and round, up and down, forever.  The whole time, Chris could see on his app (waze…great app that  acts like a GPS where you can see your road ahead of you and you can see where speed traps are real time!) that the parkway was running parallel to us.  We thought, we’ve come this far there has to be an entrance to this parkway someplace around here so we can’t turn back now.  Finally, after about 15 miles, and 50 minutes, yes 15 miles in 50 minutes, we hit the parkway.  By now we had backtracked part of yesterday’s route.  We were about to get on the parkway, when Chris spotted a sign at the last second advertising a tourist trap just  1 mile up the road followed by another town 3 miles away.  Since Grandfather Mountain is one of the top tourist attractions in the state, there surely must be something to eat in that town that was open on Sundays.  So Chris pulled a U-ey on the ramp and we headed for town.  It took almost 10 minutes to get there because the stupid road twisted and turned some more.  When we got there it was like a ghost town.  Sundays are killers for businesses in the South.  By now it was about 12:30.  We saw a lone restaurant in a strip mall open.  Casa Maya, which is a Mexican restaurant.   So we went for it.  We had a great meal which was very fulfilling.  We each got a meal, we split an appetizer and we each had glasses of iced tea.    We were so full; we couldn’t even finish our meal so we took some with us.  This ended up being our dinner as well.  We did find one thing odd about this restaurant.  Besides the fact that the entire kitchen staff was speaking Spanish (this was odd being that we are in the middle of nowhere), the restaurant had no guacamole.  Apparently Saturday night (Cinco de Mayo) was pretty busy and they have yet to recover.  When the bill came Chris asked Jackie how much she thought it cost.  Her estimate was in the 50’s.  The whole thing including tip was only $29.  We want to move here.

When we finished lunch we got moving.  Back on the parkway and by the time we reached the spot where we got off on Saturday it was already 2:00.  So basically we had gone nowhere.  We made a stop at the Linn Cove Viaduct, which was pretty cool.  According to our guidebook, “for twenty years, an unfinished 7 mile section of the parkway was delayed in opening as adjacent landowners, environmentalists, engineers, and architects put their skills together on how to preserve the scenic and fragile environment on the slopes of Grandfather Moutain in NC.  The resulting Linn Cove viaduct is a symbol of pride to landscape architects and engineers for its marriage of beauty with utility and habitat protection.”  This bridge was pretty impressive.  We were kind of surprised that they didn’t just blast a tunnel through the mountain as they had done in so many places south of here.  Chris climbed illegally up to an overlook above the viaduct and got a good picture.  Once up there he came upon a trail which we could have legally walked up, but that was a mile in each direction.  Our scramble up the rocks was much more fun and a lot quicker.

We made only a couple of other short stops today at viewpoints as the scenery while still beautiful, was different.  There were not as many viewpoints, maybe one every couple of miles instead a couple every mile, and when there were viewpoints it was extremely cloudy, hazy, or the trees needed to be cut back to improve the view.  Today’s drive was much greener than it had been the last few days.  We suspect it was because we are now at much lower elevations, we’ve been peaking in the high 3000’s rather than being up above 5000 feet as we had been the last few days.  Then, the trees were just starting to get leaves on them.  Now, the trees are full.  And the road, while still on the ridge, is travelling through forests, rolling hills and farmland rather than skirting the tops of the mountains.  It is still very enjoyable, but is more of a country drive than it is a mountain drive.

Our next big stop was at MP 272, for the Cascades trail, which led us to a tall waterfall after about ¾ miles.  The trail, like others, had numerous interpretive signs which pointed out the different kinds of trees found in the area.  At the end we came to the waterfall, where we shot a video and took some pictures.  We also saw some catepillars all over the place.  The closer to the water we got the bigger they got.  We walked back to the car, enjoying the time out stretching our legs and we were again on our way.

On the way, we saw some cool looking livestock.  Can anyone guess what these are?

Next, we stopped at the Northwest Trading Post at MP 259, where for 50+ years they have sold locally made crafts.  Like the last place like this, things were very pricey.  We ended up buying only a postcard for one of our nieces and some awesome truffles (we got a red velvet and a turtle truffle).  Why they sold truffles, who knows, but they were good.  We each got one and ate it in the car.

By this time we were realizing that we were not going to get very far today and we should get out of our groove and get someplace early so we can rest up and wake up earlier to get on the road a little sooner in the morning.  So we scanned one of the guidebooks for motels/campgrounds over the border in Virginia.  We wanted to at least make it to Virginia for the night.  We still want to camp on this trip but the sky was looking very ominous so it wasn’t going to be tonight.  There seemed to be quite a few motels but many seemed cheesy and we were not in the mood for that.  Then we saw it.  All the way up at MP 193 was a caboose motel.  These are just what they sound like, cabeese (is that the plural of caboose?) converted into a place to sleep.  We called them to try and secure a reservation but all we got was an answering machine.  We left our number in hopes they would call us back.

We then started up the parkway again, because by now it was just after 4 and we wanted to be done with the driving by 6.  At the rate we had been travelling so far, we would never make it.  Lucky for us though, the parkway was closed someplace after MP 230.  This was a planned closure, as the guy in the information center had warned us about it a couple of days ago.  The detour was very well marked and it was 28 miles long.  This was good in that it allowed us to make some really good time.  When we got back to the parkway it was a little after 5 and we were right at the Virginia border.  We needed gas by now and the good thing about only driving 100 miles a day is that you do not waste a lot of gas.  This was the first time in three days we filled up!  Gas in Virginia is 20-30 cents cheaper per gallon than NC so we filled up at 3.59 per gallon.  There were cheaper places but we didn’t want to drive 5 miles out of the way to save a couple of bucks.  At the gas station, Chris faked out a biker who was waiting in line behind us to fill his tank.  The beast, as usual, was thirsty, but the pump automatically stopped at $75.  So we had to hang up the pump, put our debit card back in to finish filling up.  We learned that the credit card machines at the pump will not take the same card twice in a row, so we had to hang up the pump a second time and try another card.  We put another few gallons in and by this time the biker went to another pump.

 We tried calling the caboose people again, no answer, and this time we were only about 10 miles away.  We figured we would drive past the place when we got there and see if they had vacancies.  If not we would find a motel.  When we got to MP 193 the phone rang.  It was the caboose people asking if we had found a place to stay yet.  We said no, and they gave us directions to their place, which was only 1 ½ miles away.  We arrived to find 3 red cabeese on a hill and a smiling owner who was more than eager to rent one to us for the night.  The cabooses, or cabeese as we like to call them are converted into little motel rooms.  They each have a Jacuzzi, a bathroom with shower, satellite TV, queen sized beds and a tiny fridge and coffee maker.  They also have grills outside and a nice wooden deck where you can sit on wooden rocking chairs and enjoy the sunset.  We tried to enjoy the sunset, but it was too cloudy so we just enjoyed the weather while we finished up our Mexican food and just enjoyed life.

On Monday we should be back on track.  We plan on getting up earlier, enjoying a pancake breakfast and hitting the road sooner.

This is the one we slept in.

The other two cabeese.

The view from the deck.

More of the view.

More view.