on the other side

tkscovill ♦ April 25, 2012 ♦ 3 Comments

                                                    West Virginia was as I remember it–hilly, with bumpy roads and little communities crammed into the endless valleys. it seemed like people lived on the edge, or in the cracks to be more precise. we saw coal mines and oil refineries from the highway, and we could actually see a layer of black dirt, or coal, between the rocks along the road. The landscape was beautiful, the small communities were quaint and the roads were in very bad shape. West Virginia was the only state where we had to pay tolls—$13.00 total–and it had the worst roads. Hmmm. On to Virginia.

                                                  Northern Virginia is gorgeous–soft hills, well-placed farms, and tree lined highways. the trees kept my attention. There was such a variety–yellow, green, yellow-green, green, dark green–a veritable crayola box of tree colors. On this day the sky was perfectly blue with just the right number of clouds. I lost track of time and before I knew it we were in rush hour traffic on the north side of the Hampton tunnel. The only other time we had to deal with traffic was when we drove through Lincoln, Nebraska and that only took 15 minutes. We sat in the middle lane in our U-Haul for about an hour watching as little buzz cars sped past us on the right and squeezed in at the last minute. I’m guessing they got to their destinations a minute or two before we did. Good thing we are patient.

                                                 We stayed at my mom’s house for a few days while we unpacked the truck and visited with relatives here and there. then we drove up the peninsula to a small area called the Northern Neck of Virginia. What we found there was wide open spaces, cute old houses, lots of rivers and inlets and enough places to store a boat to make us feel satisfied. We just wanted to get a feel for the place and it ended up placing itself under our skin.

As I write this I am sitting in the airport in Charlotte, NC, getting ready to fly back to the west coast. I didn’t get to the ocean on this trip but I did manage to gather a lot of information and inspiration. I hope to be back here sometime this summer, settled somewhere on one of the many fingers of land that a spread out into the Chesapeake Bay.

This part of our moving adventure was challenging, exciting, mind-expanding, and sometimes just plain bumpy riding. I am looking forward to completing part one of phase one–cleaning up our house to get it ready for renters, condensing two storage sheds into one, selling as much unnecessary stuff as possible, and planning phase two–the RV trip. Stay tuned for the next chapter.