The Sweatiest Road Trip Ever - Day 2. Skyline Drive in Squanket

In our last thrilling episode, you may recall that we had climbed into a rented minivan that had all the raw driving appeal and responsive handling of a poached egg, and were headed south to deliver our daughter to college in Florida.

That first night we managed to get all the way to southern New York, about 4 hours from home. We decided to crash for the night before we crashed.

In the morning, we got up early and hit the road again. We passed some time deciding on a name for the van. this is an important element of any trip. As the mighty Dodge Caravan was to be our prison for many, many hours, it needed a good name to reflect its importance.

Based on a permutation of a pond name we saw, we decided to call the van Squanket.

Shut up.

Go name your own van.

As you may or may not know, I simply adore tourist traps. The tackier and more awful, the more I genuinely enjoy them.

Here is a partial list of places that my family would not allow me to stop (on the flimsy argument that Tori needed to be at school on time for orientation):

The John Wayne Truck Stop and Chrome Shop
The Lion's Den Adult Superstore
The Food Lion
The Runaway Truck Ramp

One of the many, many "World's Largest Fireworks" stores we saw along the way.

All my sightseeing had to be done along the road, at 70+ miles per hour.

I did get to see:

This

truck

painted

like

Shrek.

The Rust-Oleum Factory

Drooling Tori.

Oddly Contorted Alex

A LOT of super-huge crosses.

People with the worst camp site in the world.

This fine person with the "Democrats Kill Babies",  "Hitler Cuomo Kill Babies", and "Trump Forever" bumper stickers.

I will admit that some of these attractions were less appealing than others, but still, I like the adventure they offer.

We did trust our GPS (named Nellie) to find us a park to have lunch in. We followed her off the highway and pulled into a scenic parking lot at a truck repair facility.

Thanks, Nellie. This is really nice.

After some high-intensity whining, I managed to get the family to allow me to pull off the highway into a tourist information center in Virginia.

I opted for the safety rest area instead of the danger rest area because I am a responsible adult.

Awwwww...

I did discover a triceratops fossil. No big deal or anything, but I think I deserve some sort of award.

It doesn't say anything about removing these items. Thanks for the free gum, Virginia!

Oddly specific directions.

The friendly attendant talked my ear off for about 8 or 9 hours, while I slowly edged away from him. I leapt into Squanket and squealed out of the parking lot and he clung to the hood like some action-movie hero, still trying to convince me to take more pamphlets extolling the virtues of visiting the Factory Outlet Stores next to the Applebee's.

After some tricky evasive driving and three trips though a car wash, we managed to get him off the hood. The only thing that remained was a piece of a map, beckoning us to visit Skyline Drive, a scenic road that winds along virtually parallel to the highway we were on.

"Let's do it!" I cried, reaching out and snatching the scrap of map from under the windshield wiper.

"We drove on Skyline Drive when we came to Virginia before," Kerri reminded me.

"And it was lovely, right?" I said, steering Squanket off the highway toward the beautiful Shenandoah Valley. And it really was lovely. Even the second time through.

Scenic Vista.

Another Scenic Vista.

The 10 millionth Scenic Vista.

The names of some of the overlooks were worth the price of admission.

This, in case you wondered, is what Gooney Manor Overlook looks like. 

And speaking of Gooney.

Tori noticed the buzzards circling overhead and suggested that it might be time to leave.

I made her play dead as a distraction while the rest of us piled in the van.

It really makes you wonder, doesn't it?

Tunnels are always fun.

Wheeeeee!

The road continued to wind and be scenic and lovely, but it was really, really long. Eventually, I asked Tori to look at the pile of literature that the ranger had given us when we entered the park and see how long Skyline Drive is.

"105.5 miles," she answered. "And the speed limit is 35 miles per hour, so..."

I might have lost consciousness for a moment because I didn't hear the rest of her reply.

"105 miles!" I cried.

"105.5," she corrected.

"105.5 miles of this slow, winding road?"

I could feel my family's eyes boring into me. So I closed my mouth and smiled. "Sure is scenic, isn't it?" I asked. "Oooh, look! Scenery!"

A small problem with Skyline Drive is that there are only a few ways off it once you get on it. And they are many, many miles apart. Another, more deeply personal problem was that Alex had developed some sort of intestinal distress and was clouding the air inside Squanket with a toxic haze of egg farts.

Thanks, buddy!

"If you had let me go to the World's Largest Fireworks Store, we could have strapped a bunch of bottle rockets onto the van and blasted back to the highway," I whined.

"If you light a match anywhere within a mile of Alex, we'll all die," Tori choked from the floor, where she had slumped.

We did, eventually, wind our way back to the highway and, all in all, we only lost about 3 precious hours of driving in the race to get Tori to school in time for orientation.

The only way I could see to make up for that lost time would be to stop for pizza.

Alex used his super power of Googling things to find a lovely-looking pizza place that had a wood-fired oven.

The food was delicious. And, boy, did it feel good to sit down after that long drive.

Fortunately, the service was super slow, so dinner only took a couple hours.

At some point during the meal, it was apparently decided that I should be relieved of all driving responsibilities and Kerri was to be the driver from now on.

Which is fine with me. Now I can really do some sight-seeing for the rest of this trip.

Virginia Vacation Journal: Day 4

Last night was a non-stop thrill ride of street noise, temperature extremes, and cramped combat for valuable bed real estate on a too small mattress. So, really, anything that came after last night should have been marvelous by comparison. Odd how things don’t always turn out like you might expect.

We began the day with yet another all you can stomach breakfast spectacular. This one was tended to by two women. The elder of the two spent most of her time sitting at a table, gabbing with the maintenance guy and coughing into the damp rag that she used to half-heartedly swipe at any spilled milk on the counter. The younger girl stood around, scowling at texts that she continually received and picking her teeth with her finger. A finger, I realized, that she was also using to arrange the bagels and pastries.

 The kids again enjoyed the waffles.

Our plan for today was to hit a local geological wonder called The Natural Bridge, then, time permitting, maybe go to a nearby zoo and gawk at the animals and wonder how their breakfast was.

The internet changed our plans somewhat. Reviews for the zoo we were considering included entries like, “For the love of God, do not go here.” and “The animals are crammed in cement boxes. I’m ashamed that my money helped support this horrible cruelty.”

So, we decided to simply make a day out of The Natural Bridge Entertainment and Shopping Complex of Endless Joy. It actually wound up being a good idea, because with all the gift shops we were forced to exit through, we had little time left for anything else.

Our tickets included admission to The Natural Bridge, The Nature Trail, The Indian Village, The Toy Museum, The Wax Museum, The Wax Museum Factory Tour, and The Natural Bridge Caverns.

Overwhelmed by our seemingly limitless opportunities, we began our day at The Toy Museum, located conveniently directly on the way to The Natural Bridge.

The Toy Museum was a delightfully whimsical trash heap of dusty, dilapidated displays. Your tour begins with this subtle suggestion that touching the displays will result in immediate, high-tech death.

This threat may be responsible for the cleaning crew's reluctance to dust any of the displays or to even replace any of the figures which have toppled over the years.

I spent most of my time in the museum waiting to see some child unwittingly touch a GI Joe doll and then stare in mute horror as the giant death rays dropped from the ceiling and vaporized him. I guess the threat worked, however, as nobody was vaporized.

Many of the displays showed historically accurate reenactments of famous battles. Like the Battle of Gettysburg, as fought between Smurfs and Playmobil knights.

We wandered, awe-struck, through the seemingly endless display cases of junk. Music from a local pop music station blared from a tinny overhead speaker, enhancing the mood and making me seriously consider self-destruction as an appealing alternative. All I had to do was touch a display...

After we had seen all the terrifying dolls, nightmarish clowns, and chewed up He-Man figures we could tolerate, we exited through the dark, deserted gift shop.

It was so dark and deserted that I refused to believe it was actually the gift shop. Kerri had to drag me back to the sign that said, “Gift Shop. Ring bell for service. Area is monitored by closed circuit security cameras. Shoplifters will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Thanks for coming!”

We slipped outside and shook the odor of stagnant decay from our clothes before heading down the path that lead to The Natural Bridge. The path ran along a beautiful, cascading waterfall and ended at the snack bar “With 15 Kinds of Hot Dogs!!!!!” and “The Natural Bridge’s Famous Nacho Chips and Cheez!!!!!”

Somehow, we escaped the siren song of cheez and wandered toward the bridge. The Natural Bridge is absolutely stunning. Vaulting walls of carved rock soar skyward in an amazing display of geological architecture. We spent quite a bit of time wandering around under the bridge, craning our necks to view the majestic, scarred rock.

You can see what are alleged to be George Washington’s initials carved into the rock. Our first president was, evidently, also a vandal.

I was even more enthralled with the natural stone Buddha I saw in the rocks. This far below the Bible Belt, however, Buddha gets no mention.

We followed the footpath along the river for about three-fourths of a mile. stopping to check out Lace Falls, a beautiful, serene waterfall that tumbles slowly over the corrugated rocks that line the river bed.

We also took time to see the Indian village, but the lack of spicy, curried delicacies saddened me and I had to leave.

Despite our collective hunger, we somehow managed to once again avoid the tempting Natural Bridge Cheez in favor of a short drive to The Pink Cadillac Diner where authentic, tattooed, pierced waitresses–just like the one’s from the 1950’s–served us our food.

Our drive back to The Natural Bridge Entertainment Complex of Sorrow and Despair was briefly interrupted by a detour to Foamhenge, a mysterious full sized replica of Stonehenge, made entirely of styofoam.

Time, the elements, and vandals have eroded the styrofoam so that the entire area is covered with a thin, swirling layer of tiny pellets of styrofoam. The terrible environmental impact of the sculpture is dwarfed, however, by the very real threat that its creator may be lurking in the bushes nearby.

We raced back to our car and returned to the safety of The Natural Bridge Touris Trap Extravaganza. Next up were The Natural Bridge Caverns, “The Deepest Caverns in Town!”

When our tour began, the guide arrived and immediately captured our attention with his introduction, “Th’ nex toah bouttah b’gn so anyone gutta ticket, y’all line up ovah heah now an’ we git goin.”

It was all said in one breath and at the level of a low mumble.

The guide hurried us  hrough the caverns, occasionally flitting his flashlight across some alleged point of interest for a half a second and mumbling, “Dis heah wheah th’ firsplorer of th’ caverns git stuck fo bouttah daynahaff till he gut rescued.”

Trying to decipher his authentic, redneck mumblings added a delightful thrill to the tour, which Alex had already pronounced, “Weak.”

The weakness of the caverns paled in comparison to the absolute and total weakness of The Wax Museum. The various tableaus presented at the museum all depicted some  aspect of the history of The Natural Bridge. It was a history lesson that was brought to life by the dedicated artists and craftspeople who managed to make every person they depicted look like a horribly mutated Bill Cosby–a Bill Cosby affected by extra chromosomes, leprosy, and mange.

The self-guided factory tour showed us the painstaking processes involved in making all these likenesses of Bill Cosby.  We all agreed that our favorite part of the tour was the cheery, red Exit sign that heralded our release.

We raced back to the hotel so the kids could once again frolic and play in the pool and Kerri could once again scramble to find us yet another hotel for tomorrow.

Another quick overview of online reviews had again changed our plans. Reviews for the hotel we had planned on staying in had a marked tendency to dwell on the unpleasant fact that the hotel is apparently built five feet from some very busy railroad tracks.

Comments like, “I was really tired, so I didn’t find all the trains rumbling by nearly as disturbing as some reviewers did” seemed somewhat mild compared to the spicier “The pool needs to be condemned by the heath department” and “The entire hotel shakes every time a train passes by. All night long.”

Kerri did manage to find a new place near Richmond. When I told the kids about the change of plans, they both hugged and thanked me.

“Will there be Make-Your-Own-Waffles at the next hotel?” Alex asked.

We honked down a hasty dinner of pizza and raced back, once again, to The Natural Bridge All Encompassing Diversion to view a spectacle billed as “The Drama of Creation” wherein, according to the promotional literature, The Natural Bridge is bathed in a brilliant explosion of multi-colored lights, choreographed to music and a narrative describing the creation of the bridge.

“So we’re leaving the pool and going all the way back there to watch them shine lights on the bridge and play some music?” Tori asked.

It sounded less appealing when worded that way, but our only real option was to risk contracting Dengue Fever or cholera by hanging around in the human skin chowder of the hotel hot tub.

So we raced back to The Natural Bridge Complex of Forbidden Pleasures and found an empty parking lot.

“Oh Boy!” I cried, “We get a private show!”

“Yeah. Because everybody else in the whole world is doing something that doesn’t suck,” Alex muttered.

But we will never know.  I ran into the building where the clerk, busy polishing the death ray protecting the toy museum, told me that the show was out of order. “It’ll be up again by Friday,” she said.

“We’ll be gone by then,” I whined.

“Mhmmm,” she muttered, “Well, thanks for coming.”

Both kids were cheering wildly as we drove back to the hotel.

So I sent them to bed.

Virginia Vacation Journal: Day 3

The problem with the reservations was the amusement park. We arranged our trip so we could make a sort of U shape through Virginia. We planned on entering on the western side, heading south and east and ending up at the beach for a couple days. Everything was fine until Kerri found a great deal for amusement park tickets for the middle of the week. King’s Dominion promised thrills, excitement, and absolutely NO REFUNDS for any reason ever.
Even if the park happens to be closed when you are in Virginia.
Which it is.

Actually, they are open one day that we will be here.
Saturday.
The day we will be at the beach.
Several hundred million miles from King’s Dominion and its twisty, turny fun.
So, rather than lose the money that Kerri spent on the absolutely non-refundable-for-any-reason tickets, we have rearranged our schedule.
Now, we’re going to spend two nights in Lexington and three nights in Doswell, right next to King’s Dominion and Richmond.
No beach.

Today, after waffles, we packed up and headed off to Skyline Drive, a beautiful 105 mile road across the tops of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
I stopped by the front desk to double check my directions and there was a lady in front of me doing exactly the same thing.

“What’s the best way to get to Skyline Drive?” she asked the desk clerk.
“I don’t know. I’ve never been there,” the clerk answered.
“Isn’t it like a half an hour from here?” asked the incredulous woman.
“I don’t know. I’ve never been there. Let me check.”

The clerk ducked behind the desk for some time. Just when I thought that she had effected a stealthy escape, she popped back up holding a large binder full of pre-printed Google maps.

She looked over two maps thoughtfully before offering one of them to the lady in front of me. “Looks like this one will get you to Skyline Drive.” Then she held out the other map. “So will this one.”

“Which one would you recommend?” the lady asked.
“I don’t know. I’ve never been there,” the clerk answered. She looked at the maps again. “Looks like this one will take you over the mountains through Luray,” she said, pointing to the first map, “And this one will just get you there on the highway.”
“Will the way through the mountains be all hilly and twisty?” the woman asked.
“I don’t know. I’ve never been there,” the clerk answered, “But since it’s through the mountains, I expect it will be hilly and twisty.”
“I think I’ll take the map for the highway. We were on a hilly road yesterday and it made us all carsick.”

Avoiding the hilly road to get to a 105 mile mountain pass seemed a bit shortsighted and I predicted spectacular carsickness on a grand scale for this family. I tried to get a peek at her vehicle so I could look for them on our drive today, but she raced away too quickly.

I confirmed our directions and we set off. We opted for the hilly, twisty road as a sort of appetizer for Skyline Drive.

It was a beautiful ride. We got on Skyline Drive about 30 miles along the way, but since the speed limit was 35 and the views were spectacular, the 75 miles we were on the road took us almost four and a half hours.

We stopped at many scenic overlooks to enjoy the scenic scenery.

 (Scenic scenery.)

We crossed the Appalachian Trail more than once and were spared the olfactory ordeal of actually coming within smelling distance of any thru-hikers.

(Hiding from smelly thru-hikers.)

After Skyline Drive, we finished our drive along The Blue Ridge Parkway instead of hopping on the interstate. It probably added an extra hour to our drive, but although my rear-end is sore, my eyes are happy. It was another gorgeous drive through the mountains.

(More scenic scenery.)

The timing of the drive today meant that we missed lunch, so we arrived in Lexington hungry. We checked in at the hotel, a Country Inn & Suites, and went out in search of dinner.

After dinner, we returned to the hotel so the kids could swim. The only reason they wanted to come on this vacation in the first place is because we booked hotels with pools.

The lobby of this hotel is brown. I mention this because my mother is a frequent traveler and has developed an odd theory about travel. Brown lobbies are an unmistakable, irrefutable sign of a lousy hotel. If she goes into a hotel to book a room and the lobby is brown, she turns around and leaves.

The pool area in our brown lobbied hotel is dark and somewhat disreputable looking. If the hotel has a bad section of town, the pool is it. Sitting in the dim, moribund lighting sapped my will to live and I had to leave the area lest I become terminally depressed and cast myself into the pool’s turbid depths.
The kids would have been happy to splash around in the murky pool all night, although Tori expressed a fear that there may be a crocodile hiding in the deep end.
“It’s 4 feet deep and I can’t see the bottom,” she whispered to me.
Whispering was unnecessary. For some odd reason, we were the only people at the pool.

I’ll be sure to check the lobby color of the next place we stay in.

Virginia Travel Journal - Day 2 - April 25, 2011

Today began with an all you can possibly gag down breakfast buffet of industrial strength, commercial grade food-like substances. Alex and Tori were both greatly enamored of the “Make Your Own Waffle” attraction featured in the hotel feedlot.

I waded my way through some coffee and even rashly attempted a waffle before setting off in search of an auto parts store for more brake fluid and some brake cleaner. It seems that having a car that stops on demand will be desirable when driving through the Blue Ridge Mountains.

I eventually found what I needed and got busy making the hotel seem even more attractive by jacking my car up and fixing the brakes in the parking lot. An angry, sweaty guy doing auto repair in the lot can’t help but class up any hotel.

After I was sure that the car would stop, we packed up and headed off to spend the day underground exploring the caverns that all of Virginia seems to be built upon.

We began at Shenandoah Caverns (“The Only Caverns in Virginia with an Elevator!”), part of a sprawling entertainment complex so tacky that it made me tingle with joy. Our guide through the caverns–Cleatus or Cooter or Jeb, or whatever his name was–seemed intent only on getting through the caverns as quickly as possible. Early in the tour he asked a visitor what time it was.

“11:30.”

“Well, that ‘splains it,” he drawled, “If’n I was at school now, ‘steada here, I’d be at lunch.”

I don’t know what that explained exactly and I really had no desire to probe the matter any more deeply.

We saw some very cool rock formations including the Bacon Formation. Sadly, it looked much better than the waffle I had eaten at breakfast.

(Bacon rock!)

As we wound our way through the incredibly beautiful caverns, the guide snapped off the lights in each room as soon as we left it, no doubt in an effort to remind us that this was his lunch time. He seemed to hesitate at one intersection.

“Usually we go that way next,” he said, indicating one passageway, “But shoot, I been doin’ this here tour for like two and a half years. It’s boring. I think I’m gonna mix up a little today.”

He then ushered us down the other passageway.

Throughout the tour, Kerri was pursued by a slightly creepy guy in sweat pants who was insistent upon telling her about his experiences climbing through the sewers of New York City in his youth. He seemed to find some parallel between the sewer systems of New York and a network of stunningly beautiful natural caverns in rural Virginia. If that parallel exists, I have been grievously misinformed about New York’s sewers.

When our tour ended and we finally released the guide so he could have his lunch, we slipped over to the other attractions included in our ticket price. Main Street Parade USA was a sprawling warehouse of parade floats “From ACTUAL Parades!!”

 (creepiest parade float ever.)

We wandered around for a bit and then went to The Yellow Barn, which did not have a motto or a slogan, but I will happily supply one for free. “Lots of cheap, Chinese crap for sale at unreasonably high prices!”

We slipped away for lunch before heading off to Luray Caverns, alleged to be the largest caverns in the eastern half of the country.

What these caverns lacked in elevator service, they made up for in sheer volume of people crammed into the caverns. The caverns were breathtakingly gorgeous. They went on and on, each room opening into another, even more amazing spectacle. We went on a 1.4 mile stroll through the most gorgeous rock formations I have ever seen. They were even more beautiful than I can possibly imagine New York’s sewers to be.

We meandered through the caverns, listening to the self-guided tour and allowing hundreds of people to race past us. They all seemed to be in a terrible hurry to get to the gift shop so they could buy a souvenir from the caverns they barely saw. They raced from point to point along the path, listening to the self-guided tour headsets at ear-battering decibels.

“Did you hear that?” a wife would yell to her husband.
“What?” he would yell back.
“It says that the formations grow one cubic inch every hundred and twenty years!” she would yell.
“I’m not at that part yet!” he would yell back.
I saw one lady ask one of the many guides posted throughout the caverns, “How many more rooms are there until we can go to the gift shop?”
“A lot,” he answered.
And she seemed disappointed.

The only person who didn’t seem to go whizzing past us was one old man, tastefully bedecked for a day of caving in a three piece suit. He pottered along near us, seeming to match his pace to ours solely for the purpose of irritating me. He struck up random conversations with everyone he passed. He began a few conversations with me, but the tour headphones gave me an excellent cover for pretending that I did not hear him.

(Me ignoring the creepy old guy.)

He eventually gave up on me and turned to another man nearby. “The air seems remarkable pure down here,” he observed. Then he chuckled and added, “But I just polluted it a bit.”
We ran a little then.
In the caverns, we saw some amazing sights. My favorite was Dream Lake, a shallow pond so still and smooth that it gave an amazing illusion of depth by reflecting the stalactites above it.

 (the stalagmites on the bottom are actually reflections of stalactites!)

There was also a small pool that served as a wishing well. Our audio tour explained that it was nearly six feet deep, but typically it was filled with up to four feet of coins. Last year–because whenever people see water, they feel compelled to throw coins in it–they shoveled over $50,000 from the well and donated it to charity. I’m considering installing one of them in my front yard.
Or applying as a charity.
After the caverns, we exited through the Olde Tyme Gift Shoppe and managed, somehow, to resist buying the ubiquitous polished rocks that seem to be a staple of every gift shop in the world.
We went across the street to the Historical Museum. It was sadly devoid of people, most of them were busy to buy huge foam hats at the Gift Shoppe cross the street.
The museum had some fascinating displays, including an actual Civil War field shower so amazingly complicated I realized that the south lost the war because they were too busy trying to figure out how to set up their showers.
There were also old clothes, ice skates, weapons, and, perhaps most exciting of all, a dog-powered butter churner. For real.
And then there was another Gift Shoppe. Sadly, they did not sell replica dog-powered butter churners, but I asked to be put on the waiting list should they every start production again.
Satisfied with our subterranean exploits for the day, we headed back to the hotel so the kids could swim and Kerri could spend the rest of the evening scrambling to change all our hotel reservations for the rest of the trip.