Our 20th Anniversary Trip!

Thursday morning, I blogged that Tom had to take Katie to the doctor because she had an ear infection. Well that put us late in leaving. We had to stop by Walgreen's and pick up her antibiotic then we headed for Spartanburg to drop off Katie to Tom's parents. We didn't leave Columbia till a little after noon. After we dropped Katie off, instead of backtracking to Spartanburg, we went through Chesnee (Tom's parents actually have a Chesnee address but I swear they are closer to Spartanburg). We got stopped by a train that was not moving. After maneuvering through several back roads that he had never been on, Tom came out exactly where he wanted to. He is amazing. He is a human GPS and always has been! We grabbed a bite to eat and gassed up the van and took off. When we crossed the state line into Virginia we got a kick out of the sign that said "Virginia Techology Corridor." The problem with that is the only thing we saw was cows. Don't know if they were robotic cows or not but now everytime we see a cow, we call them Virginia Technology. The cabin was just past Luray, Virginia. We got to the cabin around 10pm Thursday night. The cabin is brand new. I think we were only the third couple to stay there. It was very nice and though the bed was up to my neck (I HATE tall beds!), it was very comfortable. I want one just like it. Tom hated all the big windows in the living room with no blinds or drapes over them. I thought he was nuts because we were on about 10 acres of land so nobody could see in that cabin.

Friday morning I got up at 7am, as I do every morning to get Katie ready for school. But this morning, I was treated with a beautiful view of a mountain and beautiful sunny day shining through the tons of windows in the living room. It was awesome! After Tom got up, we grabbed breakfast and headed up to Shenandoah National Park (which our cabin was REAL close to) and took a drive on Skyline Drive. Tom regretted not driving his car instead of the van because there was no snow accumulation. But I'm glad he didn't have his car. He would have wanted to test his Stabilitrak of his Genesis. I'm, as Tom calls me, a "flat lander." I grew up in south Louisiana where there are absolutely no hills, much less mountains. So being in a vehicle going fast around around a mountain on a curvy road is not my idea of fun. It was scaring me but he was loving it. If you ask him, he wasn't going very fast but it felt like Dale Earnhardt Jr. flying around the curves! but the view was breathtaking. I loved stopping at the overlooks. There was snow on the side of the road when you got about 2000 feet up. I loved the icicles. They were beautiful!! When we came down the mountain, we took the long way back to Luray and grabbed a pizza from a local pizza shop there called Anthony's XII. It was delicious! Tom said it was New York style. I had never had that before and I loved it. Tom is harder to impress. He said the sauce was too sweet. Anyway, Friday afternoon I realized that I forgot the charger to my camera at home. So we headed to Gainesville, VA since it had the closest Best Buy. Evidently my camera is too new. No one had the batteries or the charger. Since we were only 30 miles from DC at that point, I asked Tom to take me to DC to see the monuments at night. I was in awe. It is GORGEOUS at night. It was overwhelming for me to be in our nation's capital. I realized how many great men have been there and shaped our country....like Ronald Reagan! After a trip around DC, we headed back to the cabin with Earnhardt Jr. flying around the curves in the dark on the way from Front Royal to Luray. I did alot of praying that night. The locals up there go very fast and Tom is a very good driver so he decided when in Rome....and he was going fast too. We got back at 11pm and went straight to bed. It was a great day but a long one.

This is the master bedroom. The bed was so comfortable but way too tall for my taste!

I loved the fireplace! It was remote controlled. What would the cavemen think? (And not the Geico ones of course.) hehehe

Tom hated the shower. It was a two person shower and you couldn't turn on just one shower head so you had water shooting at you from the back and the front.

Tom was texting Kevin from work.

Is this creepy or what? I was a big horror film fan growing up so when I saw this, I instantly thought of Amityville Horror. I know the windows in that movie were curved with panes but it still made me think of Amityville Horror.

I love icicles on the side of a mountain. It was beautiful!!

This car was in Front Royal, Virginia in the Wal-Mart parking lot. I know some South Carolina rednecks that would LOVE this car!

Saturday morning we got up and headed to DC to I could see everything in the daytime. It looks so different in the day. Street vendors are EVERYWHERE! One other thing I saw was Obama's face everywhere....T-shirts and signs everywhere. It was disgusting. But otherwise, DC was GREAT! We headed to Baltimore the long way so I could catch a glimpse of Arlington. I didn't get a picture of that because as I had done the whole trip, I hit the power button on the camera instead of the button to take a picture, and turned the camera off. It was frustrating but I would get excited to get a picture and not pay attention to where my finger was and turn the camera off. Tom was giving me a hard time with how long I took to take a picture. I explained to him it does take a long time when you turn off the camera, have to turn it back on, then point and shoot! grrrrr The old post office. The top of the tower has a mall in it. Tom and Brittanie shopped and ate up there when they went to DC a couple of years ago.

Jefferson Memorial.

Lincoln Memorial.

International Trade Center.

White House.

White House on the other side.

Capital.

National Archives, where the Declaration of Independence is kept.

Washington Monument.

Air Force sculpture

Pentagon.

Anyway, I asked Tom to take me to Baltimore since we were so close so I could get a picture of Charm City Cakes! I love the TV show "Ace of Cakes" and it was so cool seeing where it all happens! But we both couldn't wait to get out of that city. Graffiti is a bad sign to us and we got out of there ASAP! I don't know how people live in big cities. Between the ugly houses all on top of each other, the graffiti, and the traffic, I'll take Gaston any day!

In Maryland and Pennsylvania, we saw these weird domes. They were surrounded by Department of Transportation trucks and equipment. We had never seen anything like it.

Charm City Cakes!!! That's Duff's car right in front!! They don't allow visitors or I would have gone in there to meet Duff and the gang!

After Baltimore, we headed to Hershey, PA. Tom has been there before but I hadn't. I loved the street lights shaped like Hershey's kisses, especially the silver ones with the "Hershey's Kisses" tab that spun around. It was so cute! He took me by the Hershey factory and down a back road through a neighborhood that was right up against Hershey Park. I am used to Carowinds where you can't drive that close to the rides. But we could reach out and touch the big coaster while riding down that road. I can't wait to come back and take Katie and Brittanie! Katie is going to love Chocolate World! I made Tom stop and buy me a Hershey's bar so I could say I ate a Hershey's bar in Hershey, PA! Tom thought I was a dork. He asked me how was it. My answer? "Fresh!" hehehe

Cocoa Avenue

We were driving on Chocolate Avenue.It said "Welcome to Hershey. The Sweetest Place on Earth."

Check out those street lights!

Sunset in Pennsylvania. It was beautiful. My cell camera doesn't do it justice.

After Hershey, we headed back to the cabin but went a different direction than the way we came so we could pass through a piece of West Virginia. At one point, we left Maryland, crossing into Virginia, and then into West Virginia all in 2 minutes! That was kinda neat!

Through all of this traveling, we neglected to buy souvenirs. So Sunday morning when we got up to head home (9:45am), we tried to find souvenirs. Well this isn't tourist season so there were no little souvenir shops open. We stopped at Wal-Mart and a few travel centers. We even stopped at the Tourist Information Center in Harrisonburg to ask where we could find souvenirs. It was run by 2 old ladies that were evidently bored because they talked Tom's head off for almost 30 minutes and in the end all he got was brochures and still no clue where to buy souvenirs. So we will have to get them next trip. I was disappointed that we didn't get snow at the cabin. The morning we left, it was coming down hard but it didn't accumulate. As we were leaving Virginia, we saw it snowed all around where we were. :-(
We picked up Katie from Tom's parents (she had a great time with them...as usual) and spent a little while with them and then headed home. We got home around 8:30pm. It was a long day and I swear it takes longer to get home than to go up there. It is nice to be home but I really missed my mountain view when I woke up this morning.