Morbid Romantic

Book Review & Personal Blog

State: Utah
City: St. George

I know that it’s September, but I’m not used to waking up to chill 58 degree mornings. I still have a few months left of morning warmth in me. Virginia won’t get that cold in the morning for another month, at least. The cold was biting but also a little refreshing. It felt good to get out of the hotel room and smell the air, which seemed extra clean because it was so frigid.

Our plan was to make it all the way to St. George today. It was a realistic plan since we only had half of Colorado to go and then route 15 along Utah to St. George. We estimated a good 6 hours on the road, but it would all be worth it if we could reach our destination and finally be some place other than a hotel, not looking at more road ahead of us. I mean, seriously, you do sort of get tired of the US when you’ve been staring at it passing by your window for 6-8 hours a day for 5 days. It’s lovely and exciting too, yes, but not something I want to endure longer than, say, a five day period.

For the last leg of Colorado, the trip wasn’t as death-defying. Maybe I had somehow strengthened my disposition over night. That’s what I like to think. In reality, I think the mountains were just a little less terrifying because we were heading towards the end of them into the cliffs and valleys of Southern Utah. Stuff like you see in Western movies. Of course the middle of the Rockies is going to be high and nerve wrecking to the point where your blood pressure rises and all you can do is try to control the ringing in your ears. But what goes up must come down. Hopefully not at 100 miles an hour barreling down the side of a mountain. No. In low gear at a safe and steady speed that won’t at all kill you (unless the person behind you is barreling at 100 miles an hour and rams into you… or is one of those out of control trucks that have missed their ramp).

I admit, though, that I really started to enjoy all of the tunnels and rivers (like the Colorado and White) around or under us. Towards the end of our travels through the Colorado Rockies, we drove through or in between mountains instead of at their edges. This is my preferred way to drive through mountains because there’s no steep drop to look down at. All that there is around you is safe, tall mountains to the left and the right, road before and behind.

Blessed was the moment when Colorado turned to Utah. I think we all felt, at that moment, a sense that we were close to home. The terrain and the state are so familiar to us that we all collectively relaxed and eased through the cliffs and deserts of southern Utah. There’s something about southern Utah that’s really gorgeous, even for its lack of trees and grass. I kept making us all pull over so that I could see the skylines and scenic things. The first one we went to, I am ashamed to say, I didn’t have the courage to climb. We had to walk up this really steep and FAR path to a higher peak, which was intimidating because we were already pretty high up. I couldn’t imagine going even higher. Plus, I was wearing flip flops, which don’t have the best traction. Instead of climbing to the summit to look down, I walked through a bit of the barren trees and plants to find a place to take a picture down into the cavern.

Oh, and the bathroom there was gross. It was one of those holes in the ground. I never, ever want to experience another bathroom like that in my life.

The coolest part of the scenic turn off was that Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch hid in the caverns. The cavern was massive. It was something so big and so deep that it was impossible to scale from where I was standing above it. Because it was so big and so deep, everything looked very small. Does that make sense? That something can be so big that it appears small? I think the cavern appeared as such because I was so far from it and couldn’t put all of the lines and smaller cliffs within into proper perspective. To me, since I was hundreds (thousands even) of miles above, of course it was small.

When I think back on it now, I feel a little sick to my stomach that I stood on the edge of a cliff so deep. All it would have taken was one wrong step or something to unsettle me. I hate stuff like that. I’ve always been terrified of heights, but I’ve worked on recovering from it to the point where heights don’t bother me terribly. But, every now and then it does get to me.

Southern Utah is desert, okay? You see desert and small patches of plants here and there. All around are red and brown cliffs with the occasional white streak here and there. Moab, which we passed, is famous for its natural rock arches. I’ve never been to Moab and seen those arches, but they seem pretty awesome. I’d like to head down there sometime and check them out. And then maybe go over to Zion National Park to see their things, too.

My first impression of St. George was, “so this is a little oasis in the middle of the desert?” And it is. We’re surrounded by red rock mountains. There is one right in my mother’s backyard, close enough that we can see people rock climbing or scaling down. The main part of the city is at the bottom of the valley thing and everything else is up from it. So, St. George is a… concave dome of rock. And HOT like you wouldn’t believe. Not the humid hot I am used to in VA. No. Hot skin baking heat that just pounds down at you from above and makes the paint on the street signs curl. Though I was relieved to arrive at our destination, I was also a little bit bummed because I know that come Saturday, the work will begin anew and we’ll be unpacking from wake to sleep.

State: Colorado
City: Glenwood Springs

So, more Kansas today. We still had half the state to drive through. I admit that I wasn’t looking forward to it because the previous day had been so boring. I knew that what was waiting for us on the road were more hours of Kansas plains. Nothing but endless green rolling hills. We were all complaining about how absolutely dull it is in Kansas and how much we’re looking forward to being in a different state with, hopefully, more interesting terrain. Like a brave line of caravan going to the front line, we prepared for our trial ahead.

That was just what we got. Prairies and hills until we thought we were going to die of boredom.

Until I saw the perfect chance for us to get off of the road. All along the highway, for about 20 miles, I kept seeing signs for something called Prairie Dog Town in Oakley. They advertised to have all sorts of animals, but more importantly, Prairie Dogs. I’ve only ever seen them on television; this Kansas prairie land has to be good for something. There’s nothing that I love more than hard to find and strange local entertainment. My suggestion to stop was met with a little resistance and grumbling, but all it took was a sweet reminder by me that stopping would be a good chance to smoke one cigarette after another. This was all that it took to woo the difficult among us…

It was really all we could do to keep from laughing when we walked into this place full of taxidermy projects and strange nick knacks. The place was dirty, cramped and sold stuff that I can’t imagine anyone wanting to buy… like magnetic rocks and fake vomit. I think I saw a couple of eye twitches when we looked at the stuffed two headed calf (I think that’s what it was) and the cage of real rattlesnakes, but definitely when I pointed out the stuffed Jackalope. I wish that I got some pictures of the inside shop because it was like something out of a movie.

My mood was a little soured by “spoiled sport” when it was brought to my attention that the animals kept there are probably bred, fed and then killed to make things like purses or shoes or fur goods. I didn’t want to admit it, but I think it’s probably true. The owner boasted that he and his wife caught over 1,000 rattlesnakes that year. There definitely weren’t 1,000 rattlesnakes in their little snake cage, so I can only imagine what the fates of those others snakes were. Poor things. All of those poor furry creatures.

Prairie Dog Town was a strange place. The first thing you notice is all of these holes in the ground, but that’s all they were when we walked out. Then all of a sudden, BAM, we’re surrounded by prairie dogs coming out of their holes and watching us or scurrying about. They were soooo cute, but those sharp nails that they have to dig around in the dirt with were hardcore. There were also piggies and Kit Foxes and Coyote and a BIG rabbit that I am sure is going to make a good fur coat one day. Still, thanks to Jerk, I couldn’t help but feel guilty at every animal that I cooed at because I was encouraging their imprisonment, I was part of the problem and not the solution. Because of people like me, this guy keeps animals, makes money off of them, kills them, sells their skin and makes even more money from them post-humorously.

It was a good thing that we stopped because I would have gone insane otherwise. There was still so much more Kansas to go. By the time we hit the Colorado border, I sighed with relief. FINALLY, something different. My relief soon turned to horror when we began to go up and down the high peaks of the Rocky Mountains. The Blue Ridge in Virginia have nothing on the Rockies, no joke. My ears were popping like crazy and I kept seeing signs like, “runaway truck ramp two miles,” which only made a bad situation worse. Runaway truck ramps!? There were those warning signs every seven miles, which led me to the startling and stomach turning realization that trucks must lose their breaks a lot on the Rockies.

What made it worse!? We actually drove through a snow/sleet mixture. Out of nowhere, hard pieces of sleet start to splatter on the windshield.

If Kansas is the boring state, Colorado is the terrifying state. I honestly don’t get how people could speed and go 80+ miles an hour on those winding, high mountain roads. I could never be a trucker, hugging those turns with a massive vehicle set to run out of control or roll off the edge thousands of feet.

For my sanity, I kept my eyes on the road ahead and the mountains above. I didn’t want to start looking around below at the cliffs because then all of my fear would hit me and it would be over for me. The best thing for me was pretending as if I were on solid ground like any other driving experience. I sure do miss sea level where the worst we get is an overpass here or there. But if anything good came out of my near death experience over the Rockies, it’s that I am totally flying when I come out to Utah to visit my mother. No more of this driving for five days thing.

The Rockies takes its toll on everyone and we settle in a city called Glenwood Springs. It appears to be a small ski resort area, which makes sense because we are in the Rockies and close to Aspen. Everything was packed in real close together, like a mini city squished in between high, tremendous mountains. Seriously, we were circled in by mountains and all we needed was within walking distance.

Our hotel was the Starlight Lodge, which had a stuffed bear in the lobby and fake flowers everywhere. Across the way was some place called the Village Inn. The Village Inn was a restaurant. Since it was the closest thing to our small lodge, right across the street in fact, we went there for dinner. My stomach was in an absolute fury after the ride, so I was delighted to see that they had a half portion menu on the back, which was where I got my dinner from. The three ounces of steak, half a baked potato and corn was enough for me, plus the salad and half slice of pie that came with it.

Completely famished but refreshed and enlivened by our meal, we retired to our rooms and watched HBO until we passed out.

State: Kansas
City: Russell

Well, the day didn’t begin too well. The car was packed up, the cats were in place and my mother left the car and me in it to return the room keys. As this was occurring in my world, by a turn of bad luck, we suddenly found ourselves in a ‘keys locked in the car’ incident. All we could do was stare helplessly at the keys, so close but so far away. At first, the maintenance man at the Super 8 tried to jimmy the car door open and unlock it himself with an old fly swatter, but all he did was scratch the paint. He also told us all awful stories about his house, his goat and the tree that made a hole in his roof. I don’t know what was more torture: watching him scratch up the car or listening to his slow drawl as he went through his entire repetitive story about his landlord who won’t come and fix the roof.

I suppose it’s hard to feel true sympathy for someone when you’re currently engaged in your own bad luck moment. Surely we all would have cared more if it were any other day and we weren’t getting a good hour behind schedule.

Fortunately, we all came to the conclusion that the locksmith would have to be called. We felt collectively lucky that there was one considering the small town we were in, which seemed nothing more than a few travel stores, novelty places and truck stops. The locksmith was called, an old man named John or Jim, who informed us that he was going to finish breakfast and then head right down. Maybe it’s the city in me, but really? Finish your breakfast on business hours before you go and help a paying customer? What sort of podunk business practice is that? What sucks about small towns is that you are at the mercy of businesses that can do things their way, no matter how slow or unhelpful, because they are all you have. There’s no competition therefore no need to do things the best way possible.

We are at the mercy of John (or Jim) and his eating schedule.

After 45 minutes of waiting for John (or Jim) to finish his breakfast, he finally arrives. He is easily 75 years old and brings out old medical supplies to pick the lock. What he wedges between the door and frame is one of those blood pressure cuffs that inflates as the rubber ball is pumped. He gets in between there and starts to pump the little bulb so that the cuff expands and slowly starts to separate the door from the frame enough to slip in the unlocker (I don’t know what it’s called) and pop the lock. All the while, he too is telling us a story that I can’t remember for the life of me. I think he was telling us about his breakfast and how he wasn’t even dressed yet when we called.

But, the door was open.

What a relief. And only an hour set back.

It was still an hour never to get back that we had to make up for. The later the start we get, the later we have to drive into the night.

Before hitting the interstate again, we stopped by the post office in Kingdom City to mail off a growing pile of post cards. We all had a stack and threw them in the box, which was located right across the street from a place called Nostalgia Ville. After a little deliberation, we decided not to go in since we were behind schedule though secretly I REALLY wanted to go in and look at some old stuff. From what I could tell, Nostalgia Ville is a store/museum of old pop culture artifacts from the early 20th century. You have Lucy, Betty Boop, Elvis, the Andy Griffith Show, WWI and WWII posters, etc, etc, etc. It would have been a lot of fun to walk around in, but we didn’t have the time and the kitties were in the car ready to go.

We set out and soon said goodbye to Missouri, bidding farewell to the state and to Kansas City before entering the state of Kansas.

Now, I was excited about this because Brown vs. Board of Education is really Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. When referring to the case and its significance, people just shorten it and the location of the landmark case gets lost. I was totally thrilled to get to pass through a city where such history was made, where not only was segregation by color forbidden (there is actually a Brown vs. Board II, but I’ll spare the history lesson here) but students with disabilities were now, with that decision, on their way to mainstreaming and inclusion.

But first, we had to get there. Gas came first. It was in this gas station that I first became aware of how serious Kansas takes the Wizard of Oz. Just this one little travel plaza had all manner of Wizard of Oz merchandise from t-shirts to bookmarks. Of course, when in Kansas, right? So, I bought a bookmark and something for my sister.

It was a pretty straight shot until we hit the area of Wamego. To be honest, Kansas is long and it just spreads and spreads in a straight line as far as you can see. All you see to your left and right is field, front and back is only road. After a while, the ride was mind numbing. It was so, so boring. One would think that endless rolling fields would be peaceful and serene, but after a few hours of nothing but them, you crave big buildings or a minor change in scenery. It was a few miles to Wamego when I saw the sign for The Wizard of Oz Museum. We all needed some reprieve from the road, so we agreed to take a quick look. It would be a fast stop, no more than 15 minutes. But, it would be 15 minutes on our feet bringing life back into our legs.

The Wizard of Oz Museum was surrounded by a variety of Wizard of Oz related shops like Emerald City Gifts and Toto’s Tacoz, a Mexican restaurant. The street was cool as hell. Our destination was the museum itself, which we went into and paid the small entrance fee to tour the place. The lobby itself sold all manner of Wizard of Oz merchandise like lunch boxes and posters and dolls and everything/anything you can think of. It was all there. I bought a lunch box since I collect them before going into the museum itself.

The museum was pretty much made up of old Wizard of Oz memorabilia and merchandise, most of it locked behind glass doors. There were mannequins here and there dressed up as characters from the series. In one or two rooms, you could sit down and watch the movie. All along the walls were signed pictures and facts about the books, the making of the movie and other elements of the series. All in all, it was worth the price of admission and a nice break from the road. I really enjoyed myself and I took tons of pictures of everything I saw. If anything, it was nostalgic. I don’t think there are many people in America, at least, who haven’t seen The Wizard of Oz on television. Since the book and play Wicked was released, new life has sort of been breathed into The Wizard of Oz fandom and there certainly was an ample amount of Wicked memorabilia/merchandise in the museum, too.

We stayed longer than intended. Our 15 minutes turned into about 25. This was even more of a setback, especially since when we got into the car, it was another million miles through the boring flat plains of Kansas. Despite this, we made one more stop to an old historic schoolhouse. I wanted to take pictures of it for my collection. In addition to loving old things, I like broken down and abandoned things.

Our day ended at Russell, Kansas. As luck would have it, our Days Inn was right next to a Sonic, so we ate the crap out of some food there and watched HBO until we all collapsed with exhaustion.

State: Missouri
City: Kingdom City

Since yesterday was cut short, we got an early start this morning. After a free continental breakfast of bagel with cream cheese and coffee, we set out just around 7:30am. We had intended to leave at 7am, but one of my mother’s cats found a creative hiding space and it took us a while to get him out from where he was cleverly wedged. The weather was back to normal, though a little cloudy and cold. It was an improvement on the wind and certainly an improvement on the bright heat that had plagued us through the start of Kentucky. We turned off for gas around Louisville but made the wrong left at a light and ended up in the seediest part of downtown Louisville. I was absolutely shocked (though not in a bad way) to see a man sitting on a corner with crutches.

That wasn’t the shocking part.

The shocking part was that his right leg was covered in a bandage that was slipping down. What I noticed was that on both sides of his leg, on his calf where the bandage had fallen, were what looked like flayed triangles of missing skin. It was so gross to see. It really did look like someone had just come up with some sort of skinner and sliced the skin right off like cheese or something. All I could think about was the risk of infection he’s running by letting open wounds such as those out without protection against dirt and bugs!

Anyway, that was about all that was left of Kentucky since Louisville is just near the border between it and Indiana.

When we stopped at a rest stop, we noticed that there were quite a few fallen trees around the picnic area. Inside, the lady behind the visitor’s information desk informed us that the power was out for a large area in Indiana, Illinois and other states. The storms that had knocked us out in Kentucky had done their fair share of damage through some of the other mid-American states. Trees were down, small streams and rivers were flooding, power was out and it was impossible for a few miles to find a gas station with power to fill us up. We didn’t realize the extent of the damage until we turned on the radio for some of the news reports. Some places were predicted to be out of power for three days and it was estimated that 30,000 people or more were without power.

Nasty stuff, hurricanes. I know this because I live in a state frequently hit or skimmed. Being that I am in the direct hurricane path, I never noticed the sort of damage they can have after they break apart and spread throughout the US.

Near the middle of Indiana, we began to see signs for something called Possum Junction. It was too much to resist. When we came to the exit, we pulled off. From the signs and structures out front and inside, Possum Junction serves many of your traveling needs. You can get gas, check your deer and wild turkey, buy antiques (not so much antique as old and useless crap), eat a slice of pizza or hot wings in a small café made up of second hand tables and ashtrays. It had been so long since the Pepsi machine had been used that spiderwebs had grown inside of the retrieval slot. The guy inside had a thick country accent (familiar but strange to find in Indiana) and told us all about the electricity problems.

There was no indication that we had entered Illinois when we did. Usually, there is a ‘Welcome to’ sign at the border, but along I-64W there was no such sign. I could have read the mile markers, but that didn’t occur to me at the time. We were in Illinois long before we realized that was where we were at. For about an hour or so, we assumed we were still in Indiana. It wasn’t until I looked at a map and matched some of the city/town exits we were passing to cities/towns in Illinois that I realized we had made it into our third state for the day. At our next rest stop, our state was confirmed by a sign outside of the entrance. There was no mistake about it… Illinois, the home of Lincoln, had snuck up on us when we were unawares.

I really liked the first Illinois rest stop that we went to, near Mt. Vernon. Not only was it clean and indoors, but they had a snack machine with an entire row of stuffed toys. I can’t help but wonder if anyone buys the small stuffed animals from the machine as they purchase candy bars and mini sized chip bags. It was still a pretty cute idea. I suppose they make for great quick gifts or as comfort for a child who won’t stop crying in the car. There was also, interestingly enough, a unisex bathroom. But really, it was utilitarianism masked as enlightenment. It wasn’t so much that the state of Illinois wanted to provide unisex facilities as they wanted a quick solution to their lack of handicap bathrooms. Instead of building onto the existing bathrooms or building two more, they build one handicap enabled bathroom and call it unisex.

We knew that we were nearing St. Louis and our plan was to get as far outside of St. Louis as possible before calling it a night. I could tell when we hit the rim of the city when I saw the St. Louis arch peaking out over the horizon. There it was, this monumental something that I’ve only seen in pictures or on television. It was our misfortune to hit the city just as the rush hour after work traffic did and it was chaos! People were swerving in and out, accidents lined the roads and rude aggressive drivers refused to give anyone an inch or merge. I now believe that St. Louis drivers are insane! It was one of the most stressful events of the whole trip. My mother needed a cigarette once we left traffic mess. My cat was none too pleased when she opened up the window to sneak in a quick cigarette so that her car would not start to stink up. The moment she opened the window and the loud, cold breeze began to assault the backseat with the cat carriers, Clyde started to scream. I mean, they were loud growly meows that didn’t stop until the window was rolled back up. He was definitely fussing my mother out in cat language for what was happening. I couldn’t help but laugh the entire time. He just sounded like such a MAD kitty.

If there’s one thing I can say about St. Louis it’s that I love the old industrial sectors. I love how the buildings looked so old, so dilapidated in a historical way, not in a neglected way. I could see old factories, old buildings, old apartments made of brick and steel bridges that we rode over a good three or four times. It was great scenery even in passing and I wish that I could have spent more time in St. Louis, at least enough to have been able to get out of the car and take some close up shots of urban ruin. I can’t express enough how much I love the early 20th century look of St. Louis.

Naturally, I got to see just a thirty minute fringe section of St. Louis. As soon as we reached the city limits, we were leaving them and entering other cities. We all agreed that what we had to do was find a small city to hotel in rather than one of the big, busy ones since traffic was likely to be terrible before work hours when we once again had to hit the road. Understandably, my mother wasn’t fond of the idea of trying to fight early morning rush hour traffic. Everyone had a lot of energy, so we agreed to continue until we could no longer. We made it all the way to a place called Kingdom City, the very proud home of Ozarkland and Nostalgia Ville, and got rooms in the Super 8 motel, cheap enough to not break wallets.

Since nothing can be perfect, there were some issues with the rooms. One had no cable, so we got another. One had a huge hole in the shower (I stuffed a wash cloth in it because it was just so weird). One even had what looked like a bullet hole disguised as an old picture nail. I mean, come on. It was totally a bullet hole. No one hangs a picture at chest level. And no one can drive a thin nail in to make such a dent. A dent such as the one we saw was much bigger than the nail’s width and domed in a way that no nail could do. It truly looked like someone had tried to mask the bullet hole by shoving in an old, rusty nail.

Regardless, it was cheap and they allowed cats in the room. What more could a person ask for?

State: Kentucky
City: Morehead

Today was a hardcore driving day. Since we hadn’t even made it out of Virginia the day before, we had a lot of land to cover and make up for. We set a 7 hour/400+ mile goal for ourselves. Of course, all of this came after our free continental breakfast during which I gorged myself on bagels, orange juice, poppy seed muffins and coffee. Who can resist something that is free, delicious and filling?

Once breakfast was out of the way, around 9:30am, we set out on the road. It was decided the night before that we’d try a new arrangement with me in the back with the one jittery cat and the other two in the front seat with my mother. We got the cats in place in the car where they got a proper draft from the a/c, shaded from the sun and strapped in as best we could with the seatbelts. It was all pretty good at first. Our plan was to continue down I-81 S to 77 N and then continue on until we hit I-64W again.

We went through Lexington first and saw a really neat looking drive in theater. It sort of makes me jealous that they still have an active playing drive in here and now back east. I love drive-ins because you can relax in your own car, no babies crying or people kicking the back of your chair. No. Just you and a movie, all alone and comfortably isolated. But still with popcorn. Drive-ins make me feel somewhat nostalgic, too, because one of my clearest memories is going to a drive-in as a mere child to see Hellraiser.

By the time we reached the Appalachian Mountains, my mother and I decided to go through West Virginia to Kentucky and not Tennessee to Kentucky. We could have gone either way, but the thought of looping through Knoxville to find I-75 was daunting. Plus, by going sort of further south and catching I-64 W by 77 N meant that we skirted the largest peaks of the mountains. I was glad for this because the mountains, as you know from my last post, were starting to get to me. I was in an almost constant state of alarm because I felt so frightened being high, staring down at drops that no one could possibly ever survive from. After a while, it started to work on my nerves in a bad way.

To be honest, at first I was fine in the car with the way we arranged things. I didn’t mind being in the backseat. However, as time went on, I began to feel increasingly cramped and claustrophobic. The combined and total effect of traveling through the mountains, being in the backseat, feeling stuffed in and confined complete with my only line of vision being to one side was enough to set me into a minor panic attack. I didn’t make an issue of it, I just got out of the car at the first rest stop we stopped at and asked if I could come back up front. There was no way I could make it another 6 hours in the back.

You know, I’ve always heard all of this ‘stuff’ about West Virginia being this really backwards and strange place, but I didn’t see any of that there. Perhaps it was, somewhere buried deep within the mountains and trees, but West Virginia didn’t look any different from the rest of the US. Yet, as I write this, I am reminded of what someone reminded me of earlier: the New Frontier. If you don’t know what that is, I suggest that you look up some of the programs of John F. Kennedy. It will all make sense afterwards.

It was some time out of the mountains when we got to Charleston, which had the most beautiful capitol building, which you could see easily from the interstate. Of course, the big city didn’t last long and soon enough we were going through more miles of land and water.

Small towns would be dotted here and there and we even stopped in at one called Scott Depot so that my mother could get something to drink and have a smoke. It looked really rundown, let me tell you. The station my mother pulled in at was across the street from a playground and school. I asked my mother if we could take a look at it and we did. The school was nothing but a bunch of trailers in close proximity and the playground wasn’t much better. I took a picture of a very scary clown swing set that had all manner of garbage shoved into his gaping mouth.

West Virginia wasn’t that long of a ride. But man does I-77 have a lot of tolls! Just on the stretch we were on, getting in and off of I-64W, we hit three of them (at $1.25 apiece). The entire trip had four tolls in total and three of those four were in West Virginia. We were out of it and into Kentucky before we knew it. It was at least satisfying to know that we’d made it into Kentucky.

We weren’t far into Kentucky when the residual storms from Hurricane Ike blew up through. The winds were enough to start pulling the car from side to side, which any driver knows is both stressful and exhausting. We had all hoped to make better time that day, to get further into Kentucky, at least to Lexington and beyond. The storm winds were against us and it just wasn’t safe to be on the road, especially in terrain that is mountainous. While I don’t think my mother is a poor enough driver that she will send us down the side of a mountain, my tolerance for stress just isn’t equipped to handle scary situations like that so far from sea level.

Our need to get off of the road gave us little option but to pull into the first Days Inn we found. It wasn’t in the best part of town, that’s for sure. Either that or the entire city of Morehead is dilapidated. They did have a Shoney’s with all you can eat steak, so we choked down buffet steak before heading off to the hotel room to watch True Blood on our free HBO.

The best part about Morehead is that across the street was a gas station and liquor store in one. I got a good laugh because of that place.

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.