Morbid Romantic

Book Review & Personal Blog

State: Virginia
City: Raphine

So, here we are at the Days Inn Shenandoah, still in the lovely state of Virginia.

We’re about 20 miles from Lexington with another 50+ miles to go until we reach Roanoke. I believe that this city is called Raphine, just past the Blue Ridge Mountains. From what I can tell by the surrounding businesses, this city is pretty much a truck stop area. We are right next door to a place called Whites Truck Stop that includes its own seedy motel and Burger King. Across the way is a place for truckers to go to that advertises “Soda Cigarettes and Showers.” That’s only two of the surrounding truck stops. The establishment that my mother and I stopped at to get dinner has its own area for truckers to park and wash their vehicles. I’ve honestly never seen a place like this before.

Today was a short day because we had to get a late start due to the fact that the house was not completely packed up. We didn’t pull out of Hampton until nearly 2:30pm. With everything awkwardly piled into the car, we headed out and hit the road down I-64 W towards Charlottesville. Once we got to the Charlottesville area, we went to I-81 S/1-64 W to Roanoke. Right now, we are just off of I-81 S/I-64 W. Though we only drove 4 hours, it was an exhausting ride. The cats are sure freaking out (though not so much now because they’re out and sleeping on our hotel beds with us).

Let me tell you something, though! I realized during this trip that I am really used to sea level. As soon as we started getting up near the mountains, I began to feel nervous. I’m saying, rolling stomach and panic nervous. It was all of that looking down at mountains and ridges that got to me. I’m not used to driving up hills. Driving up a hill makes me feel like we’re going to reach the top and find no more road, only a solid drop off of the earth. Not only that, but it makes me really nervous when I look out of the car window and see tree tops below me or far, steep drops. I feel vertigo and sickness, but most of all fear. I love rollercoasters, but I always fear long drops and height.

Before tucking into the hotel, my mother and I went to the nearest Walmart to pick up a few essentials like a rolling cart that we’ll use to stack heavy bags on for easy moving to and from hotel rooms. Again, I am used to beach and travel area. When you go into our department stores, there are rows and rows of things like luggage. It really struck me as different that the Walmart we went to up here only had half an aisle of luggage. But they sure did have A LOT of hunting and camping merchandise. I suppose in a place like this, full of wooded mountains and rolling land, a person can get good hunting in.

I don’t know anything about hunting, though. I just saw a very heavily bearded man dressed in full body hunting camouflage, shopping the hunting aisle. It was pretty awesome. No one hunts where I live. I mean, they might hunt, but they have to go somewhere else and do it because there’s no wooded hunting are in Hampton Roads.

Tomorrow, the goal is 7 hours and at most 400 miles. We have to try to do between 350 and 400 miles if we want to make it to our destination by the 19th.

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