High-Altitude Fabulousness

Holy cow, what a fulfilling day of familial fun. Crazy, crazy good day. Where to begin, I wonder.

Up at the crack of 6:45 to don my running clothes and hit the streets. We're in a strip mall-type area on the edge of Waynesboro, which we'll never truly enter, and there are absolutely no sidewalks anywhere. Pedestrians do not exist in the mind's eye of the Waynesboro city fathers. I mean, nothing. There was about 100 yards of sidewalk on the street in front of an elementary school (which is basically sandwiched between a Home Depot and a Ruby Tuesday's), probably the result of some obscure by-law dating from the same era as the laws that made 'em let the coloreds into the dang schools in the first place. That was it. All day in Waynesboro, we saw a hundred yards of sidewalk.

I ran 25 minutes in one direction and 25 back, and after jogging in the ditch for a while I took a right at a stoplight and hit a residential neighborhood. Quite nice, ranch homes, seemed a lot like he gated community where my sister in law and her family lived in Florida, but it wasn't gated. It had a golf course snaking through it, which also made it feel tony and private, but it truly appeared to be public. After fifteen minutes or so I can to a public park, which held a swimming pool, softball fields, several open-air performance spaces...it was truly lovely. A gorgeous municipal park. Say what you will about these sidewalk-hatin' Southrons, they build and maintain a mean park.

Back to the hotel, breakfast (I had two bananas - feeling kind of portly lately), and then we hit the road. The lady at the front desk had said "Ain't but one way to git to the poark. Git on 64 and git off at exit 9. You're raht thurr." So we got onto Highway 64, headed east, and promptly saw a sign for exit 95. Turns out, in Virginia, the words "nine" and "ninety-nine" are indistinguishable. Kind of like "there" and "their". Must be hell at auctions.

So we got off at exit "nahahaha", and sure enough, we wound up right at the entrance to the park. Stopped at the visitor center and were informed that there were a number of accessible areas for the kids, including a place 6 miles south on the Blue Ridge Parkway that included a museum of mountain life and a mountain ridgetop called "Humpback Rock" that they'd be able to hike to. Off we went.

This dang Blue Ridge Parkway thing is the eighth wonder of the frickin' world. It snakes along the mountaintops, with a top speed limit of 45, peppered liberally with ab-so-lute-ly spectacular overlooks and hiking trails all along its length, and keeps going south through Virginia and North Carolina for FOUR HUNDRED SOME MILES! How in God's name did I have no idea this thing existed? It is fabulously maintained, incredibly picturesque, and FOUR HUNDRED MILES LONG! It must be paradise for cyclists. I know the motorcyclists love it, as we saw a lot of them, but not nearly as many cyclists as you might think.

(By the way, for you motorcyclists out there: If your engine is loud, you suck. You. Personally. You are an inconsiderate and obnoxious jackass. There is no reason for your damn muffler to be so loud - it's not keeping you safe. If it were, those BMW bikes and Honda Goldwings would be deathtraps, because they make so little noise I think it actually gets quieter in the vicinity when they pass. All you're doing is slowly poisoning the day of every single person you pass on your merry Piss-Off Tour every summer, ruining the scenery with your horrid machine noises, mile after mile after mile. You are a prick, Loud Bike Owner, and I hate you.)

Anyhoo, we went and saw the museum, which is an actual 1800's cabin thats got three people working in it, and they are the loveliest, most open and warm people you can imagine, engaging kids with Jedi mind tricks that make them grin as they sit and play a dulcimer, weave at a loom, play graces, and prowl about a cabin wondering where they'd have slept had they been raised there. We were at the cabin nearly an hour, and the kids left a little reluctantly. Just fabulous people.

On across the parkway to the trail leading up to Humpback Rock. Q was a little whiny (only a little), and T is an absolute mountain goat. Both scampered happily most of the way - Q, at one point, got everyone's attention because he'd seen a snake in a stump. We took pictures, watched for probably a minute and a half - it never once moved. Gorgeous. And later on I spotted a doe, thirty feet away off the trail; we all watched it eat a while and thrilled as it walked within ten feet of us before sauntering off to look for more to eat. Beautiful.

And the view from the top of the mountain, perched as we were atop crags that were the most majestic things our two kids had yet seen in their lives, was perfect. We ate a light lunch, and walked back down.

Where the guys working on the fence near the parking lot looked at our photo of the snake and told us it was a copperhead. Totally deadly.

I came to a few minutes later, let the rangers and workmen help me to my feet, and then we all walked wobbly-kneed back to the car for another hour and a half of the Parkway. We trooped south to look at a waterfall, which turned out not to be worth the trip at all, in and of itself - but every single fifty-yard stretch of this parkway is so gorgeous you just can't feel like time there is time wasted. We got out of the park and back to Waynesboro around 3:30.

Picked up some popcorn chicken and drinks at KFC and hit he park I'd found this morning for some jungle-jim climbin', football tossin', soccer ball kickin', and all-around fun in the sun-havin'. (It had been about 70 degrees up on the Parkway, but it was 82 down in Waynesboro.) Whereupon we retired to the hotel and hit the pool.

Q swam more fiercely and aggressively today than I had ever seen him. He went the whole length of the pool without taking a breath! Which, if you know Q, is a real feat. He's never been that into swimming, let alone anything that requires physical danger or discomfort, but he was all over it today. Working on his crawl, working on underwater strokes...Great. And T! She is so much braver than Q was at her age. Jumping into the pool on her own (with a life vest), standing tippy-toe without a life vest in the three-foot end of the pool so she could practice her strokes (she can't swim as it stands), holding her breath under the water for as long as she could...Great fun. So glad we picked this hotel.

Applebee's for supper, which was clean, predictable, and inexpensive. And then back to the hotel, where we are all on the verge of collapse. A very good, full, unhurried day. Vacation is good.

Hitting the road tomorrow - this time Tuesday I should be writing this from Birmingham, Alabama (or, as T puts it, "Burping Hampster, Alabama"). Wish us luck.

I'll post the pictures as soon as I can turn my camera on without going into anaphylactic shock at the thought of the two or three photos of a co...a cop...copper...cuppamuh...cubbuh...cup....

Excuse me. I have to go lie own.