Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

West Virginia Travelog #2
Beckley, WV - Sat, 16 Sep 2023. 12:30pm


Those are the opening words of a famous American song John Denver released as a single in 1971. "Take Me Home, Country Roads" is famous around the English speaking world— I've read that many Brits think it's our national anthem— and it has a special meaning to me. Although I never lived in West Virginia, the two geographic features it name-checks in its opening words are places I knew and loved in Virginia when I grew up there. Today, though, we're driven those country roads to West Virginia. ...Well, okay, it was mostly Interstate 77 we drove today, but it passed through beautiful and remote country. Does that count as a country road? 😅

The driving portion of our trip started when we landed at Charlotte (North Carolina) airport this morning. It was a 3 hour 15 minute drive to Beckley, WV, where we're staying the next three nights.

Some might wonder why we flew to NC when there are airports in WV. The reason is that we were able to get a nonstop red-eye from SFO to CLT. Flying to any point in WV, or an airport nearer to the border of it, would've required connecting flights. The added time for those would've meant a longer door-to-door time than the route we chose.

Have a Slow Day!

We were rolling in our rental car by 8:30 this morning. Our first order of business once clear of the airport was to find a quick breakfast. We tried a nearby 7-Eleven... they had nothing prepared for hot food. The rollers and warmers were all totally empty. Staff just didn't care about that part of their jobs.

Fortunately there was another 7-Eleven nearby... and that one, too, had totally lackadaisical staff. There were a few hot items ready to go, filling maybe 15% of the space, but then when I went to get a soda from the soda fountain I found that half the sodas weren't working and the other half were connected wrong. Like, really, how hard is it to recognize that "Diet Coke" is not the dispenser to hook up the "Orange Crush" syrup to? I mean, even if you're functionally illiterate, you could at least try sounding out the words. Or counting the letters. Or looking at their shapes.

We tried— and walked out of— a third convenience store before we struck gold on our 4th try. Good ol' QT. Their soda fountain selection was marvelous, and they had a whole kitchen running with hot food to order via kiosk. I ordered up a personal-sized pepperoni pizza while Hawk got a hot pretzel dusted with cinnamon.

Tunnels and Tolls

With something resembling breakfast in our bellies we started making tracks northward to West Virginia. From North Carolina we crossed into Virginia. I was surprised when I-77 traversed first one, then a second, big tunnel. They're the Big Walker Mountain Tunnel and the East River Mountain Tunnel. The latter is over a mile long. The odd thing to me is that neither tunnel crosses under a particularly high or treacherous mountain. Plenty of other Interstate routes would curve around these hills, gaining the 500' or so of elevation necessary to cross them. Here, engineers were like, "Yay, an excuse to use tons of dynamite!"

The second tunnel crossed us over into West Virginia. Yay! And there I-77 becomes a toll road. Boo. And it's not like the toll is even paying for all the dynamite required to bore those tunnels or the upkeep on them. Those tunnels are in Virginia; different state, different transportation budget.

$4.25 later we arrived in Beckley.

Thanksgiving '22 Travelog #2
Woodbridge, VA - Sat, 19 Nov 2022, 9am

Three hours. That's the answer to the question I posed in my previous blog. That's how many hours of sleep I got while crammed aboard a 5 hour overnight flight in coach class.

The flight was fairly uneventful. At least during the 2 hours of it I wasn't asleep. It took me a while to nod off because the seating position isn't conducive to falling asleep. And then once I awoke just before 3am California time (6am destination time) I couldn't get back to sleep.

Putting on my headset and listening to my music helped the remaining time go faster. In fact, it was a bit of a revelation to have my tunes going, because they blocked out the ridiculously large number of totally insipid announcements the flight attendants were making on the public address system. I know they were insipid because I dutifully paused my music to get the gist of what they were talking about... most of the time. After their minute-plus infomercial for the United Airlines credit card I decided I know enough about commercial aviation to recognize when something urgent is occurring, and blocked out everything else they had to say. I know the drill on wearing seat belts, staying seated, and being careful when opening the overhead bins.

I continued blocking out insipid stuff while navigating through Dulles Airport. Man, busy airports are a lot more peaceful when you don't hear anything except your own soundtrack. And again the music helped pass the time; getting through Dulles takes a long time because of the way it's laid out.

As a result I didn't get to my rental car until 8:00, after having landed at 7:20. But once I had keys in hand I made good time down to my hotel.

Home Away From Home, I titled this entry. That's what this Courtyard Hotel feels like. Between it and the Springhill Suites next door, I've stayed here more times than I can count. These have been my usual places for staying when I've visited my family 10+ years.

Update: Oops, I forgot to include a picture of my Home Away From Home. It's a few blogs later.

Over the last umpteen years I've flown through Washington-Dulles Airport (IAD) more times than I can remember. Actually I don't have to remember; I have a flight tracking service I use. A quick query there indicates the number is 83. I have flown through IAD 83 times. Anyway, on a good many of those trips I have driven VA highway 28 south from the airport entrance and passed exit signs for an oddly named attraction seemingly in the middle of nowhere: The Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, an annex of the National Air and Space Museum that is part of the Smithsonian Institution. Links: Udvar-Hazy Center at Smithsonian Institution; Udvar-Hazy Center on Wikipedia.



Most of the museums of the Smithsonian Institution are in downtown Washington, DC, arrayed along the National Mall. There they share frontage with the US Capitol, the White House, and the Washington Monument. This annex was built out in farm country, or at least what used to be bordering on farm country when it opened in 2004, because the National Air and Space Museum downtown had always had way more artifacts than it could exhibit.

Finally this past week, after years of meaning to visit the Udvar-Hazy Center, Hawk and I did visit.



The building is shaped like a large hangar. This is appropriate to the nature of its content: dozens of aircraft and spacecraft from the WWI era up through the 21st century. Among the notable craft are the Enola Gay, a Concorde jet, the SR-71 Blackbird, and the Space Shuttle Discovery.




When I visited the main building of the National Air and Space Museum several years ago— actually my fourth visit, the first having been as a child of about 9— I pondered whether the museum had become boring. My 11 year old nephew certainly thought it was. Likely so did nearly every other child his age ± a few years there with their faces buried in their portable game machines. I think this museum would impress them more with its real-life aircraft standing on right in front of them or hanging overhead suspended on cables. I know it felt special for us, as middle age adults, to stand almost close enough to touch an actual space shuttle.