Late Night to Brevard, NC. Our Kind of Place!

West Virginia Travelog #20 / North Carolina Travelog #1
Brevard, NC - Tue, 19 Sep 2023. 11:30pm

Whew, it's been a long day. We wrapped up our visit to West Virginia... with a bridge, surprise waterfalls, and more waterfalls... and then journeyed to Brevard, NC, to begin the second half of our 9 day trip. In total today we drove a whopping 387 miles through 4 states... eclipsing by one mile yesterday's driving of 386 miles!

We arrived at the Hampton Inn, our home for the next 5 days, to find pictures of waterfalls everywhere. There were pics of waterfalls in the lobby, in the hall, and at the front desk. Hey, this is our kind of place!

When I asked the gal at the front desk about one of the pictures, she not only knew which falls it was but (a) told us how to get there, (b) suggested another waterfall nearby, and (c) gave us a booklet of area waterfalls. This is our kind of place!

Then, as we headed up to our room, we found another waterfall pic in the elevator, one in the hall near our room, and one in our room... in the bathroom! 🤣



This is our kind of place.

Ready to Fly Home. 5 Days Behind.

West Virginia / North Carolina Travelog #n-1
CLT Airport - Sun, 24 Sep 2023. 2:30pm

Our 9 day trip for hiking in West Virginia and North Carolina is nearly complete. We're back at Charlotte Airport, awaiting our flight home to California.

"LOLWUT," you might be thinking. "Didn't you just arrive in North Carolina?"

It's true my most recent blog was about us arriving at our hotel in NC for 5 nights. I'm behind, as usual. The by-line date on that blog is from 5 days ago. I'm stepping out of posting in chronological order here to provide better context about when our trip is over. Or, in this case, nearly over. 😅

Being 5 days behind on blogging feels both good and bad. It's bad, because I hate falling behind. But it's not for lack of trying. I've been posting 2-3 blogs per day the entire trip.That's a pretty strong pace, and I'm satisfied I've made time each day for writing. It's just that I've set an even stronger pace of doing things, and that's... well, even more satisfying. 😆

Math says I'm going to fall even further behind before I'm caught up. That's because while I generally top out at posting 3 blogs per day, I have about 5 blogs per day of things to write about from this trip. I hope I'll be caught up in a week... but I wouldn't bet on it.

As for right now, right here.... Our flight will board in about 45 minutes. It looks like we're on time to Denver, where we've got a connection to San Jose. If that flight's on time, too, we should be home-home by 9pm Pacific time.

Home. Sick.

West Virginia / North Carolina Travelog #Ω
Back home - Sun, 24 Sep 2023. 10pm

It's a good news/bad news evening. Good news: We're home. Our flights were mostly on time, nothing went wrong, and we walked through our front door just before 9pm local time. We're already mostly unpacked and I've showered up. Getting to bed at a reasonable hour tonight will help me be ready for digging out from under the blizzard of work emails and Slack messages I've been scrupulously ignoring for the past 9 days while we've vacationed in West Virginia and North Carolina, with bits of Virginia, Tennessee, and even a brief foray into South Carolina mixed in.

Now for the bad news: I'm sick. I was up half the night last night (basically from about 3am Eastern onward) with what I at first thought was a food-related sickness because I had some stomach heaves. By mid morning it became clearer it was something else: a head cold. I've had a stuffy, runny nose and occasional sneezing all day since then. Plus now I seem to have a bit of chest congestion.

Could this be Covid? That was one of my first thoughts once I recognized I had cold-like symptoms. Sadly part of The New Normal is that whenever you have cold symptoms you need to test for Covid. I just finished my test— 30 seconds of painful swabbing followed by 15 minutes of waiting to see if a second pink line appears— and I'm negative. Whew; it's only a cold. Or maybe a flu. But for now, at least, I remain a Covid virgin.