Pic 1: After the fall
Pic 2: He's a climber!
It's a slow work day here and I've spent at least an hour drooling over a world travel blog posted by some old friends. I went to their wedding about a year-and-a-half ago, but they are more friends of friends so I had no idea they were spending 8 months traveling around the world together. Truly, just traveling AROUND the globe! They flew from their home in Raleigh, N.C., to New Zealand to Australia to China to Vietnam to Cambodia to India, etc. They'll eventually end up in Athens, Greece visiting our mutual friend, then off to the Netherlands, Iceland, and back to Raleigh. Amazing. They are currently in Jaisalmer, Rajasthan -- definitely need to mapquest that one. The pictures are amazing - anything known as 'golden city' should be impressive, and it is.
Have a look:
http://www.danandandie.com/worldtour/index.html
Back here in West Virginia us graduate students have to quench the thirst for travel on tighter budgets. Which usually means staying within the state, unless your cute BF can tote you along on one of his trips, which is always nice.
Last weekend the cute BF and I checked out some parts of West Virginia that we've never been. To get there we drove through Grafton, a bombed-out town that we think of quite fondly, but that's a post for another day. We kept driving, winding up up up the mountains with roads so curvy that the switchbacks had arrows pointing towards each other. We drove past gorgeous farms, a virgin forest - J was intrigued - and then, of course had to pull over when we saw a sign for the tiniest church in 48 states. We happened to meet the caretaker, quite a tiny man himself, who must've been like 90 and very proudly told us of his impending 61st wedding anniversary, which was the next day. I teased him about not having a gift for his wife, so he promised he'd take her to out to eat on the big day. Which means he'd actually have to drive somewhere and that he still had his license - eeek! Hopefully i wasn't the cause of their 'premature' deaths or anything.
That night we ended up in Davis and Thomas, West Virginia, two reeeally small mountain towns that are right next to each other. After checking into our B&B in Davis, which was more like a quaint mini-hotel, we backtracked to Thomas to hang out at the Purple Fiddle. I had read and heard some good things about the Purple Fiddle a few months previous and it did not disappoint. The food, the beer, dessert, coffee, atmosphere and most importantly – the music – was awesome. That night it was Celtic bluegrass. Two nights later it would be our new favorite band, Steppin' In It, playing a mesh of old timey country, Cajun and swing band music. The age range of people dancing, including us!, was from 4 to 60.
The next day we mountain biked from Davis to Blackwater Falls State Park. The forest looked enchanted -- so lush, with a thick carpet of pine needles and boulders and moss. The falls were gorgeous, but J neglected to tell me until later that day that he'd heard if you look at them the right way, you could see the T Model Ford that's buried at the bottom. Eager to show off my athletic prowess, I only had one wipe out on the bike. J said it was the slowest and most ungraceful fall he'd ever seen. Sweet! Just what I was shooting for. On the way back to the B&B we got an impromtu tour of another B&B that was for sale by the owner who used to live in the South American rainforest amongst the Maroon Indians!
After driving through Dolly Sods on a dirt road and winding down deeper into the state, we passed an RV and bus village on the way to our campground. Yes, bus. People living, however temporarily, in buses! We passed a pickup truck that had a wooden box in the back with coon dogs sticking their heads out through the holes - very cute! That eve after a half an hour of trying to put the tent together (very bad instructions) the camp owner felt sorry for us and put it together in about 5 seconds using only one hand while he chained smoked with the other. Then we tried to start a fire using damp firewood. The, yet another, 90-year-old man (good ole Shreve) who sold it to us said it should be OK once we threw some cardboard on it. It never worked and after ceremoniously burning up my notes from last semester we gave up and retired to the tent to drink a bud light and eat some smores. We decided we suck at camping and resorted to reading to each other by flashlight and snuggling.
Next day, I'll make it short. Rain, rain and some more rain. Driving on kiss your butt turns. A tour of caves with really cool stalactites and stalactmites (sp?). Driving on kiss your butt turns. More rain. Seneca Rocks in the rain. Spruce Knob, the highest point in West Virginia with white out conditions. More rain. Napping in the Jeep. Analyzing the lyrics of Baby Got Back. DWD - dancing while driving. Driving on kiss your butt turns. Yummy hippie pizza joint in Davis and back to the Purple Fiddle!
With all this, who needs Jaisalmer, Rajasthan? We had an awesome time.
