Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Thanksgiving '24 Travelog #8
Linden, VA - Tue, 26 Nov 2024, 4:30pm

After visiting my niece Mattie and her boyfriend Kai over lunch in Front Royal today we refined our plans for the rest of the day. We already had plans to meet my cousin Matt and his family for dinner 30-45 minutes east, but Mattie needed to leave for work by 1:30 so several hours of the afternoon were unexpected free. I called and texted my middle sister, R.— yes, the one who's now grandma— to see if we could visit briefly or meet her for ice cream or whatever while we were in town. She didn't answer either one (typical) so we decided we'd visit a rock shop 30-45 minutes south while giving her more opportunity to respond.

No answer had come by 90 minutes later. We still had a 90 minute gap in our schedule, even factoring in travel time to Matt's place. We decided instead of arriving at Matt's 90 minutes early (which he said was okay) we'd take a scenic drive roughly in the direction of his place along the Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park.



The Skyline Drive is part of the Blue Ridge Parkway, a road that traces the crest of the Blue Ridge mountains for nearly 500 miles through Virgina and North Carolina. We drove stretches of it a lot a few months ago in North Carolina just as a convenient— and beautiful— way of getting from hither to yon. And we drove parts of Skyline Drive that brought back childhood memories.

Late Autumn isn't the best time to see the mountains. The trees that had colorful leaves a month ago now have dead brown leaves or bare branches. And it's a bit chilly out to enjoy hiking. But that's okay; we took it mostly as a scenic drive. In beauty I walk... even when by 'walk' I mean drive. 😅



We stopped at a few of the roadside pullouts along the Skyline Drive. That's part of the beauty of the road. The road is so peaceful, and every two miles or so there's a tranquil pullout to see something. We nearly had the park to ourselves. That's the upside of visiting late in the Fall and late in the day: no crowds.

Thanksgiving '24 Travelog #6
Falls Church, VA - Tue, 26 Nov 2024, 9:30am

The hotel we're staying at for our 4 nights in Virginia, the Hilton Home2 Suites in West Falls Church, is new and overall pretty comfortable. One thing a lot of travelers like about hotels such as this is that a breakfast buffet is included in the rate. Before you European friends of mine say, "Of course!' and "Yes, that's tasty," remember this is an American breakfast buffet. A complimentary American breakfast buffet. That means instead of fresh eggs, deli meats, cheeses, and baked goods it's stale, sugary carbs and other prepackaged crap. So while while many of my fellow Americans book hotels such as this because they fancy themselves living the high life gorging on that "free!" buffet, Hawk and I booked this hotel because every room comes with a kitchenette— including a 3/4-size refrigerator. We picked the hotel because that would make things easier to buy and eat our own groceries!



So indeed our first order of business Sunday morning (we arrived late Saturday night) was not to go downstairs to the breakfast buffet on floor 2 but go all the way down to the ground level and head over to the Giant Food supermarket a few blocks away. We bought drinks and snacks for the room as well as simple breakfast foods. Well, maybe not all simple. Hawk bought a tray of freshly rolled veggie sushi. 😋 I bought a jar of pickled herring, a few bagels, and a dish of cream cheese. Yes, I could literally get a bagel and cream cheese free from the buffet if I wanted... but I could tell the bagels in the supermarket were better than anything I was likely to find at a hotel breakfast buffet.

Monday morning I decided to check out the buffet to see how good of a choice we'd made. Indeed there were free bagels and cream cheese. I tried one of their bagels.... It was surprisingly way fresher than any bagel I've had at a similar hotel. But the ones I paid 89¢ each for at the supermarket were still way better.

I'm glad we picked the hotel where I can buy a better bagel.

Blue Ridge Trip '24 #12
Afton, VA - Tue, 3 Sep 2024. 4:15pm

I've mentioned the Skyline Drive in my past few blogs. I should describe what it actually is, for those who don't know. The Skyline Drive is a mountaintop road that traces 105 miles through the length of Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. In the north the road starts in Front Royal, VA at highway US-340 a few miles from the junction of I-66 and I-81. In the south it ends in the tiny town of Afton, VA at highway US-250 near the junction with I-64. It traces along the ridge of the Blue Ridge Mountains, generally above 3,000' elevation though it dips lower at a few passes it crosses.

Today we drove the Skyline Drive from its southern end, above the cities of Waynesboro and Charlottesville, about 25 miles north to the trailhead for Doyles River Falls.



The Skyline Drive isn't just a route to get from Point A to Point B, though it does serve that purpose, too. Along its length are some 75 scenic overlooks where motorists can stop to enjoy the vistas. We didn't do much of that on our trip today, as we have a fairly full itinerary with a big hike earlier today and a long drive ahead of us to our next stop in North Carolina tonight. But just driving the road, which itself is scenic with its old-timey construction from the 1930s and the Civilian Conservation Corps, and stopping at lots of the scenic pullouts, can be a vacation in and of itself. I know because that's the first vacation I ever remember having!

I think I was about 8 years old at the time, though I could have been 7 or 9. It was the first actual vacation I remember my parents taking with my younger sister and me. Actual, meaning we didn't just go visit my grandparents' house for a week or a weekend. We stayed at a hotels. Just visiting a hotel was a new experience, and splashing around in the Howard Johnson's kid-friendly swimming pool was practically a vacation unto itself, but on that trip we also drove a good bit of the Skyline Drive out and back. I'd never seen mountains before. Mountains were amazing. That first vacation kindled my interest in the great outdoors, and mountains in particular, something that's never left me in over 40 years since.

My family returned to the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Skyline Drive a few more times during my childhood. The memories are almost all positive. One, though, is bittersweet. I was reminded of that one today, too.

A Bittersweet Stop on Memory Lane

At the southern end of the Skyline Drive, near Interstate 64, is a hotel on a hilltop. Once upon a time it was a Howard Johnson's hotel. We stayed at a lot of HoJo's hotels (as they were casually known) back in the day. They were family friendly, had a decent standard of quality, and always had a HoJo's restaurant attached, which was also very family friendly.

Today the hotel stands empty and abandoned. I'm not sure what happened here, as it seems like a good place for a hotel. The HoJo's brand did run into difficulties years ago. Part of my childhood experience with them was seeing their quality start to slide downhill. Their once ubiquitous restaurants, with the orange and teal roofs, started to close down.



What's bittersweet is not just that the HoJo's chain deteriorated and closed, or that this particular HoJo hotel and restaurant are long abandoned and overgrown with weeds. It's also that my memories of staying here are mixed.

We stayed here at part of a short vacation my parents took us on at the last minute. Vacations of any kind were rare enough in my family growing up. This one was also spontaneous. Like, my parents decided on a Friday, "Let's take the kids and go to the mountains this weekend." My parents were never spontaneous.

Car Trouble (Almost 40 Years Ago)

Things were going well on the trip. We checked in to the hotel on top of the hill then drove back down for a meal at the HoJo's restaurant (the one now overgrown) below. But as we piled back into the car after lunch to drive up the hill, the car couldn't make it. It lost power on the hill, and my dad carefully reversed it back to the parking lot.

It was a Saturday afternoon, and in this small town there was no place to get a car fixed until Monday. Actually there was no place to get this car fixed anytime in this small town. The closest shop was down the mountain in Waynesboro. And they weren't open until Monday. So we had a longer-than-planned stay at this mountaintop hotel.

As a kid, the stay was great. Swimming in the pool was fun, having an extra day was fun. Eating dinner at the steakhouse in the hotel was fun— we didn't eat every meal at HoJo's restaurant— especially laughing to myself about why the restaurant found it necessary to post signs on every wall inside telling patrons, "DO NOT ORDER STEAK 'WELL DONE'". Like, that's their usual clientele: braying jackasses who think bellowing, "And make it WELL DONE!!" when ordering a steak shows what sophisticated customers they are. Stay classy, small town America.

As a kid, it was good times. But I wasn't just a kid. I was a teen. I was mature enough to think about situations from other people's perspective. From my parents' perspective this had to be worrisome. Were the kids going to be okay here? How long would it take to get the car fixed? Would my dad miss more than one unexpected day of work? And how much would this all cost? Not just the car repairs, but also the extra hotel night and all the dining out. Money was tight for my parents. That's why our vacations were few and simple compared to many of my schoolmates' families, and why spontaneity wasn't really a thing for us.

The good thing with this star-crossed trip is that the car got fixed quickly on Monday morning. The cost wasn't huge though it was certainly a lot for my parents' already strained budget. And we kids had a good time hanging out at the hotel's pool for an extra day.

Blue Ridge Trip '24 #10
Afton, VA - Tue, 3 Sep 2024. 1:30pm

Today we've driven up to the Skyline Drive northwest of Charlottesville, VA. We're not here just to drive the Drive, though that is a worthy thing to do on a pleasant late-summer day. We're going hiking on the Doyles River Falls trail in Shenandoah National Park.

Because the Skyline Drive roughly traces the crest of the Blue Ridge mountains, many of the hikes from up there are "upside down". Meaning, we hike down on the way in... and up on the way back. Years ago an outdoors writer quipped it's like going on vacation on your credit card. You pay when you return.

Indeed the first part of this trail was down, down, down... and not just down but steeply down. In the first 10 minutes we'd already descended 300 feet. I figure it's going to take a lot longer than 10 minutes to climb that last leg of the trail on the way out.

Well below that point, more like 800 feet down from the start, we reached the first of three waterfalls.



This is the smallest waterfall of the three and is unnamed. I'd say it's a nice little reward for the energy we'd expended, an appetizer for the main course, except that we haven't really expended any energy yet. I mean, hiking downhill is tough in its own way—tough mostly on knees and toes— but it's not the cardio workout that climbing back up will be.



Not far below the unnamed falls is Upper Doyles River Falls. Yeah, the people responsible for naming things here were really phoning it in. They went from an unnamed falls to an uninspiringly named falls. But hey, it's a double falls. Yes, both the lower and upper halves are Upper Doyle River Falls. Uninspired.



Someone was already splashing around beneath the lower falls with their dogs, so we scrambled up the rocks on one side to get to the base of the upper tier.

It was nice here, so we stayed for a while. I'd say we were resting our aching muscles, but again, our hard work was yet to come.



As other people arrived we swapped places to the lower tier of falls so someone else could enjoy the upper tier.



Of course, from below the lower half we can still enjoy (as in, see) both halves.

Soon enough it was time to continue downhill. Lower Doyles River Falls awaits!

Keep reading: Lower Doyles Falls & back to the top!

Blue Ridge Trip '24 #8
Buena Vista, VA - Mon, 2 Sep 2024. 5:30pm

Today's a two-fer of hiking and waterfalls. After a steep hike at Crabtree Falls that mostly tired us out we found we still had energy left for a short hike somewhere. And fortunately "somewhere" was close by and kind of on the way back to our hotel. We drove up the ridge to the Blue Ridge Parkway, headed south to the next crossing at US-460 above Buena Vista, then veered off on a dirt and gravel road for about 3 miles to the trailhead for Panther Falls.



As befits a two-fer trail the hike to Panther Falls was easy... -ish. The trail dropped steeply for the first minute or two then leveled off at Pedlar Creek. From there we followed the creek downstream for a bit until we climbed over rocks where it goes over a couple small falls.



Even though it was getting later in the afternoon there were still 2-3 small groups of hikers there with us. Unlike us, though, they were either there to swim in the swimming holes or smoke and drink on the rocks. We were content to stay dry and to have only nature's beauty as our natural intoxicant.



After a short while we'd had our fill of nature's beauty. It was time to get back to town and fill up on some much-welcomed dinner!

Blue Ridge Trip '24 #6
Lexington, VA - Sun, 1 Sep 2024. 10:30pm

My trips often take me to fairly anonymous looking hotels in office parks and small towns. For tonight and tomorrow night we're in a Hampton Inn... in a mansion built in 1827.



This is the Col Alto house in Lexington, VA. It was built for a US Congressman.

Of course, we're not in the historic mansion part of the building. Yes, rooms were available there, but they're a) old-timey and b) $$$. We're around back in what feels like the servants' quarters, on the ground floor. Except it's not really the servants' quarters because... think about it... 1827 in Virginia, a slave state. The servants were enslaved people. They probably slept 6 to a room in a wooden shack. Yes, there's literally a wooden shack outside our room! A historic marker proclaims "nobody knows what it was used for." 🙄 Our ground floor room may only have a single window that opens barely 4 inches for fresh air, but we have all the modern conveniences.

Blue Ridge Trip '24 #4
Pembroke, VA - Sun, 1 Sep 2024. 4pm

You know how sometimes you see a picture of a place and say, "I've got to go there!"? I do that a lot, actually. It's not really that surprising. We humans are visual creatures, and here in 2024 it's easy to find high resolution, full color pictures when researching places to go... or even when not particularly looking, but a friend shows you their pictures— like I do in this blog. Our hike today was inspired by a poster I saw at a highway rest stop, of all places.

On our trip to West Virginia last year we stopped at the Welcome Center in Virginia— we were just passing through that state— and saw a big picture of a waterfall on the wall. "I want to go there!" I said aloud to Hawk. It was Cascade Falls. We looked it up... and it wasn't near enough to where we were already going to fold into our plans. Ah, but when we say "No" to things such as that, "No" is not short for "Not ever"; it's just short for "Not this time." We came back out to the Blue Ridge Mountains again this year, 11½ months later, and Cascade Falls was absolutely on our list. It even wound up being the first hike we did this trip!

We got going a bit late this morning from our hotel room in Roanoke. I slept in 'til 8:30 this morning after a late night last night and let Hawk sleep in 'til 9:30. We were rolling by 10:30. We stopped in Blacksburg, VA for lunch, eating just off the campus of Virginia Tech, and got to the trailhead near Pembroke, VA just before 12:30pm.



Cascade Falls is a hike of about 4 miles roundtrip with 700' of elevation gain. The trail follows the creek all the way up, so the ascend is mostly gradual over the 2 miles in. At the end of the lower part of the canyon we reached a 66' tall waterfall.

Soaked on the Way Back

The weather was not great today. It was cloudy and humid. At least it wasn't hot. It was around 80° F. ...But it was also near 100% humidity, so hiking was tough. Sweat was pouring down my face. Then just after we got to the falls it started to rain. At first it was a mild drizzle but then the sky opened up. We decided that was a good reason to start back.

It rained pretty hard on us for 15 minutes. We took refuge under the canopy of some trees, but even those didn't hold the rain off for more than a few minutes. Hawk put her rain jacket on while I decided I'd just get soaked. It was still warm enough that being drenched didn't totally suck. I knew if nothing else I had a dry change of clothes in the car at the trailhead.

The rain let up once we were far enough down the trail to not want to go back up and see the falls again. 😅 We continued back down to the trailhead, mostly focusing on putting one foot in front of the other to make it quick in case the rain returned. It didn't, and in fact by the time we got to the parking lot the weather was warming up. Steam was rising off the blacktop as water evaporated. None evaporated from my shirt, though. The dang thing was plastered to my torso when I peeled it off at the car.

Now we're down the hill in town, enjoying snacks at a convenience store. Hawk bought a bag of cheese puffs while I bought an ice cream cone. Pembroke's not even a one-stoplight town. Thankfully, though, it's got 2 or 3 gas stations with big mini-marts. In a few minutes we'll hit the road again... but not to home. We're off to another hike, this one at the hopefully not aptly named Dismal Creek Falls!

We saw an interesting thing when we were driving around in Virginia earlier this week: gas below $3/gallon!



The sign in the pic is at a station about 7 miles from my old home that was always the cheap spot in the area. Stations closer to where my youngest sister lives were selling base grade gas for just 10 cents more— and still below $3/gallon, though just barely. Stations in the shopping district near the highway and our hotel ran about $3.25.

I was looking forward to buying some of that sub-$3 gas before we left Virginia on Wednesday. Alas all the stations raised their prices by 10-20 cents in anticipation of the holiday weekend with record travel forecast.

Meanwhile, what are prices back near home in California? They've actually just dipped down below $4, at least at the Sunnyvale Costco which is selling at $3.99. Non-members-only stations elsewhere in town are likely anywhere from $4.19 to $4.59.

Thanksgiving Travelog #2
Sheetz gas station - Sat, 18 Nov 2023. 9:30am.

We're a few miles outside IAD airport right now, stopped at a Sheetz gas station for breakfast. Yes, that means our flight landed and we got our rental car and left the airport. All that happened without too much drama. The flight was a bit late. It was kind of a pisser sitting on the tarmac at SFO for 30 minutes late at night. Once we took off I settled down to sleep, though I only got about 3 hours.

Coming off the red-eye flight I felt rough. I was tired and I know I looked haggard. Stopping now for some breakfast makes me feel a bit more human.

First up today (after breakfast) will be to visit my niece, Tessa, who lives 45 minutes west of here. When we were discussing when to arrive she asked we not come before 11am as she often only gets up at 9 since she works remotely now. Geez, I work remotely and I set my alarm for 6:45am on weekdays, aiming to start work at 8. Occasionally I have an earlier meeting than that. She must be enjoying her easier hours!

West Virginia Travelog #16
Beckley, WV - Tue, 19 Sep 2023. 9am

We have an ambitious plan for today. It's out last day in West Virginia so we're looking to pack in everything else we wanted to do that we didn't do already.

...Wait, leaving West Virginia? you might ask. Wasn't the whole plan of this trip to visit West Virginia?

It was, when we initially planned this trip 6 months ago. But then more recently when we started planning out specific things we wanted to do we found that WV wasn't quite as rich in them as we'd initially thought... and that North Carolina is. So today we're driving to North Carolina, after finishing up here in West Virginia.

Like I said, we've got ambitious plans for today. We'll start with a self-guided tour of the New River Gorge Bridge. That's been on my to-do list since reading about it in a Civil Engineering class in college decades ago! Then we'll finish up some unfinished hiking business here in WV, with Twin Falls State Park. If there's time after that we'll hike a falls in Virginia. ...Yes, Virginia, because to drive to Brevard, North Carolina we have to drive through 4 states: West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina.

It's going to be a long day. Time to get going!