Last night the hotel internet was not cooperating, so tonight will be a wrap up of day 1 and day 2 of our road trip to Nashville. Sorry no pictures as my iphone is not cooperating downloading my pictures.😬 Will post a few to Facebook after I finish this post.
We left our home at 7:15 AM Friday morning with our new car "Ace" packed for a 10 day road trip, not knowing what a post pandemic trip was going to look like. Our first stop was planned to meet up with a good friend I met more then 10 years ago through blogging. We completed three 25 mile bike events, even though we lived a state away from each other. Frederick, MD is her current home, so we met there for lunch at Red Robin. It was a nice few hours enjoying our meal with lots of catching up. MUST plan another visit sooner than the five years that have passed since we last saw each other.
Around 1 pm we headed to our destination for the night traveling originally from Pennsylvania, through, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and finally back to Virginia. Night one was spent in Harrisonburg, Virginia, where my oldest niece, Emily went James Madison University and now works for a non-profit in the downtown area. We drove by some of the university on our way to meet up with her and her boyfriend Eric for a nice dinner of specialty pizzas at Bella Luna. YUMMMMMM, topping it off with some gelato across the street at their sister business. It was so nice to catch up with her and get a chance to meet Eric. Crashed when we got to our hotel for the evening and even slept in later Saturday than we expected.
Day 2 Saturday
After breakfast we headed out for the day, traveling south with some more stops and sightseeing. The weather was rainy and miserable, and SO chilly. We had planned to head to the Cass Railroad in West Virginia for a two hour train ride, but after the checking weather on Wednesday, decide to cancel that reservation. Instead we headed to Lexington, VA to drive through Virginia Military Institute where my nephew Ben (Emily's brother) graduated from two weeks ago. The campus was so cool and we were glad to fit this in to our schedule.
Since we had a shorter drive planned for the day, we headed from Lexington over to pick up the Blue Ridge Parkway. Fun find for the day was going through the town of Buena Vista and spotting a sign with the word "Phillies" on it. Turned around to take a picture since this was the past manager, Charlie Manuel's home town! So neat to come upon this since we had no idea when we set out on our route for today.
Not sure what the climb did to the car, but we drove some crazy sections of twists and turns as we climbed to an elevation of 2325 ft. A terrible smell poured in to the car. We stopped at the look out area and Andy determined it wasn't over heating or the brakes. After opening the doors the smell eventually subsided and Andy thinks it may be catalytic converter or drive train. The rest of the day was fine and he is off Googling what might have happened as I type this post!
It was raining as we got to our next spot, Nature's Bridge, so we just headed to the Virginia Museum of Transportation. We both thoroughly enjoyed walking through the museum as well as outside to the rails to see an assortment of old trains of all kinds. Amazed at how large some of them were as we could stand right next to them.
Another full day in the books for us as we had an early dinner and are relaxing in our hotel room with our HUGE TV for the night waiting to watch our Saturday night Grand Ole Opry concert! Will arrive in Music City tomorrow!
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