Left Peggy’s about 1pm.\u00a0 Blew an hour trying to find the AAA office in Wheaton.\u00a0 If I wasn’t addicted to AAA maps I would blow those suckers off.\u00a0 Their whole routine gets more and more shabby every year as far as I’m concerned.\u00a0\u00a0 Well, I guess they did pull my ass out of the grass when I got stuck in Vermont, so I guess they’re still OK…<\/p>\n

Anyway, here I am heading out for 2-3 hours of driving with 2-3 hours of daylight left, again.\u00a0 I must be doing this on purpose since I do it every day.\u00a0 Even though my official stance is that I should get to the new places I’m going early enough to explore them and enjoy them<\/em> … sigh.<\/p>\n

It is a very simple 4.5 hour drive to Chapel Hill south-southwest on the interstates, but that’s not for me.\u00a0 I drive due west on I-66 to Front Royal<\/strong>, and after a couple of unproductive turns I cross the Shenandoah Mountains and take I-81 down the middle of the Shenandoah Valley<\/strong>, a very beautiful drive, especially this time of year.\u00a0 The leaves are past peak here, but I do get a few more days of good leaves as I keep heading south.<\/p>\n

My destination is a $10 National Forest campground near Buchanon VA<\/strong>, right off the interstate .\u00a0 As I get near I have a few things on my mind:<\/p>\n

\n
• I’m running out of gas.<\/li>\n
• I’m out of propane and it’s going to be cold tonight so I will have no heat (how spoiled we get!)<\/li>\n
• It is game five of the World Series, the G’s could potentially close it out and I would hate to miss that.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

  So I do a drive-by on Buchanon to look for hel on these three issues.\u00a0 One out of three ain’t so good.\u00a0 Three miles out of town the wrong direction I find diesel, but a big FAIL on the other two.\u00a0 Interacting with the locals was a little creepy – these folks are very backwoods-y.\u00a0 I saw two confederate flags<\/strong> in the five block-long town, and I got some serious stinkeye<\/em> from a couple of Gomer-looking dudes sitting at the “Burger King” when I hopped into a quickie mart to ask where the diesel was.\u00a0 I kinda felt like I was in the movie Deliverance<\/strong>. … and I’m not even in the deep south yet!<\/p>\n

  I found my campground (thank you GPS), with all of about 40 minutes of non-darkness left (wouldn’t really call it daylight), then I hunkered down and froze my ass off.\u00a0 Oh yes, with “No Service” on my iPad, so I couldn’t even follow the Series on the web.\u00a0 If I had known the G’s were gonna win it all tonight<\/strong> I would’ve stayed somewhere a little more connected … maybe another exciting night watching tee vee at the Applebee’s and sleeping at the Walmart.\u00a0 I need a third Applebee’s to confirm that the female bartenders are required to display their boobs as company policy.<\/p>\n

  Tuesday<\/h3>\n

  I had kind of a headache all day, which reminded me that I had kind of a headache all day after I froze my ass off one particular night on a previous trip. Maybe my aging constitution can’t recover like it used to from that chilled to the bone for ten hours<\/em> s—t.<\/p>\n

  Driving out of the Forest, and up the hill to the Blue Ridge Parkway<\/strong> the autumn hills were awesome. But they were also very steep and rugged and remote-looking and reinforced that whole Deliverance feeling. I’m not sure I’m ready for the South or the Appalachians.<\/p>\n

  My route (SR 43 to US 29 to SR 86) takes me on five miles of the Blue Ridge Parkway, for which I am happy! That is really an excellent drive if you ever have occasion to be in this part of the world. I stopped at the closed for the season Visitors Center and took a nice little hike through the woods.<\/p>\n

  On the other side of the parkway, I am back in suburban white Virginia, as opposed to redneck white Virginia. Nice houses, nice lawns, rolling hills and prosperous farms, rather than unpainted shacks with rebel flags in steep tree-covered “hollers”.<\/p>\n

  Uneventful drive from country back to city, and the edges of the Tri-Cities traffic jam. Got to Ekim’s about 5:30. He gets the Baseball Channel, and they replay the G’s game – woo hoo!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Left Peggy’s about 1pm.\u00a0 Blew an hour trying to find the AAA office in Wheaton.\u00a0 If I wasn’t addicted to AAA maps I would blow those suckers off.\u00a0 Their whole routine gets more and more shabby every year as far … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall-2010-east-coast"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.whufu.com\/wpwhu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}