Back From Virginia

Oh well, I'll wait until next year.

Now back to Virginia. I have to say, Virginia is GORGEOUS~<3 No wonder it's the state for lovers Lovely rolling mountains covered in thick trees, valleys sprawling in countryside with old cottages and breathtaking views from lofty heights. Sadly, I didn't want to bring my very expensive camera down into the States for fear of loosing it or getting it stolen. I'm okay taking it with me in Canada but if I loose it in the United States, that's it of it. Not to mention that it's a very expensive camera, like +$800 Canadian. Then again, I didn't use my mom's pocket camera at all during the trip. NEXT TIME FOR SURE, I'll bring my camera along and take more landscape shots! (landscape shots are my forte)

However, one may ask how was the trip in a whole. Well, I'll have to separate them in days since it will be easier to do so in chronological order.

After my Dad got home from a morning of work, we all packed are stuff into the car and headed to the Peace Bridge near Niagara Falls. There was a terrible hold up when we're crossing into the States. (Btw, we Canadians call the US of A 'The States' for short) While being in the slowest lane possible for 25 minutes, I kept myself occupied by playing licence plate. For those of you who are not familiar with the license plating in North America, the license plates are issued through the state law in the USA, similar to the provincial/territorial law in Canada. Canada has 10 provinces and three territories, compared to US's 50 states. This makes playing license plate very boring in Canada. Usually, every single plate corresponds to the province or territory that you are in. Very rarely do you see a license plate from outside your province or territory. Still, that doesn't mean that people don't travel by car through Canada. Mind you it'll take several hours to get to one place to another, let alone 15 days on the road if your driving from the west coast to the east coast. However, when you play license plate in the States, it's a hundred times more interesting. The US has fifty states and makes the game of license plate more satisfying when you have several dozens to find on the road. State license plates also get very elaborate with different decals and designs to make them stand out. Up here in the Great White North, we prefer to use clever or funny numbers or letters to make up our license plates just for a quick laugh. But we do have decals for some, like provincial logos or special ones for veterans.

However, I'm getting off track here. My Dad hates waiting in one spot for too long while traveling. He was pretty much venting about how we got stuck in the slowest lane in the border crossing. Despite my Mom telling him that she had been stuck here for over 45 minutes one time, my Dad kept on getting grumpy. As for me, I kept my cool by doing license plate. I got several from Florida and Georgia, which I found neat considering how far north they were. After the gruelling 25 minutes at the border and being checked by a rookie border guard, we were in New York State. As soon as we're out of Buffalo (which is across from Niagara Falls on Lake Erie) we headed south through the roads that tapered over into the Appalachian Mountains. The Appalachians do begin in Quebec and New Brunswick, but that's only a mere shaving of their full beauty. The soft mountains that rolled over into the east were covered in a thick blanket of forest, the trees in their full summer plumage. Our route snaked through the countryside and into small villages that lay in the valleys of the Appalachians. The large highways that cut through the timbers of the north east sloped upward and downward, looking over the hills and valleys that painted the land. Our trip was met with a siege of rain that flooded yards and parking lots on the way, but created beautiful imagery as the clouds and rain decorated the landscape in veils of clouds and downpours of rain. The biggest bulk of the trip was in Pennsylvania, where the roads wind and snaked over the mountains and deep into the country terrain. We drove through Pennsylvania for several hours until we slipped by Maryland and into West Virginia. No sooner did we enter Virginia that we decided to stop our 9 1/2 hour drive and head into a hotel. My Mom got tired from driving and my Dad was feeling sleepy. Before heading in for the night, I saw my first glimpse of fireflies. Fireflies live in temperate and tropical environments near the tropics, they wouldn't last a year if they were to live in Canada, where it's too cold for most insects to live. Mind you the sleep wasn't that enjoyable as watching the fireflies dance in the night. My Dad has a bad habit of snoring, to my Mom he sounds like a moose in heat. This went on for five hours into the night when my patience broke and I had to wake him from his little snoring-spree. Dad hates it when I wake him up at night, since I scare him half-to-death with my dark silhouette.

After Dad stopped snoring and let both my Mom and I sleep, we headed out into the wilds of Virginia to find their friends' cottage in the Wintergreen resort. My parents have made this journey before two years ago, where they went to their friends' cottage in Virginia for the July 4th weekend. I was left alone that summer, without anyone to greet me with a Happy Birthday when I awoke, but this year will be different. We entered the scenic Blue Ridge Mountains, the pride and joy of Virginia. During the day, up close on the BR Mountains, they looked like lumpy green mountains of mashed potatoes, but from afar, they look like a velvet blanket coating Virginia in emerald hues. But by dusk was probably the most gorgeous time to view the BR Mountains. They change from a recognizable green to a deep blue that coated the land before night fell. As the mist and rain fell, (and we did get rainy weather while we were down there) the clouds caressed the mountainsides with wispy clouds and thick grey mists, coating the landscape in a veil of white. During our journey, we used a GPS to help navigate the roads down south, but once we hit Virginia, the GPS got confused with it's directions that were put in there before and kept on getting us lost. This caused a fracas with my Dad, since he always wants to know if they're going the right way on a trip. However, we did get the right directions and used my Mom's technique of remembering landmarks on the route to get there safely. When we arrived, our friends left us keys to a cottage they rented out at the resort that we're sharing with another couple that came down from Canada who were acquaintances of our friends. We unpacked our bags, popped open a few cold ones and chatted with them on the porch. Afterwards, we went to a restaurant called the Devil's Backbone in the valley of the Blue Ridge Mountains. They make the best appetizers and burgers in Virginia, hands down! My Dad had a huge helping of a steak sandwich which he didn't make a dent into after and hour of work and everybody enjoyed eating outside as the mountains turned from the colourful hues of dusk into the dark blues and blacks of night. For the first time, I saw a clear night sky dotted with stars that you can only see in the countryside. Although I live in the suburbs back home, you could never see so many clear stars on a night like that. All of the constellations flourished in the clear night, decorating the sky like dew drops.

This was the day that we decided to do what my Dad wanted to do while we're in Virginia, get new tires for the car. My Dad compared prices with that of Canada and the US with buying and putting on new tires and checking the breaks, apparently you can get them cheaper in the States as opposed to Canada. So this was our shopping day and I don't think there's that much to say about it besides my family getting some new pairs of shoes, eating out and enjoying the day like the tourists that we are. After getting the tires on at Wal*Mart (or what my Dad calls it "Wally*Mart or Wally*World) we followed the directions to the Blue Ridge Mountain Restaurant where we would meet up our friends after their big golfing day. Despite getting lost again and asking if the restaurant workers have seen them, we decided to buckle down and eat our pizzas. I had a great pilsner called üBER PILS, (because why not) and my parents had a pizza with apples on it. Apples on a pizza?! Unheard of! We left the restaurant just as our friends were pulling in and missed them by a longshot. It wasn't until they got in several hours later that we learned the truth.

As of 1:42 am, I was officially 24 years young . . . and it was a cake-less birthday. We made an agreement to go into Richmond, Virginia today to see some of the museums and be tourists for once like we said we were as we were dining out. The ride to the state capital was pretty lengthy, to the point where we had to stop at a Mickey D's (McDonald's) for a washroom break. While in richmond, we went to the Museum of the Confederacy where it was riddled with antique swords, guns, muskets and all sorts of artifacts from the American Civil War. Next to the museum was the White House of the Confederacy/Davis Mansion that served as the estate of Jefferson Davis. After getting lost in Richmond due to our screwy GPS, we headed back to our friends' chalet for dinner and barbecue.

This was my first Canada Day in which I wasn't in Canada to enjoy it. My Dad was all cranky from not getting enough sleep and started to moan about going back home due to the sloppy weather we were getting. We decided to head out, but not without saying goodbye to our friends and recycling our waste. The trip was shorter going up than down . . . in which we didn't veer into West Virginia on our GPS. During that time I got some reading done in the car to get me away from my parents and their spiel about following the GPS. After 9 hours in the car, we were back home and in time for the fireworks.