FIFTY STATES AWAYOur quaint hotel stop turned out not to be as restful as we’d hoped, although a lovely place to stay, with exceedingly friendly owners, rather bizarrely what sounded like and air raid siren went off frequently during the night. We took it all in our stride and have been laughing about it during our drive today. We are so aware of how lucky we are to have the opportunity to do this trip, so everything good, bad or silly seems like a perfect part of the trip.
There was another rather geeky treat in store for me today as we excitedly drove west through the scenic beauty that is Virginia to visit West Virginia. The weather can’t seem to make up its mind, it kind of looks like it’s autumn here with patches of winter. It’s either orange or snowy. As we wind through these States it feels like we are trying to outrun the weather it feels like a major bout of snow is trying to make an appearance!
Our destination it was a very snowy and chilly -6 degrees! At this point in time I am rather thankful for the heated seats in the car, I don’t know how I will cope without them when we return! So where did we go? Well The National Radio Astronomy Observatory!
I have been looking forward to visiting this place for some time now. I’ve watched a lot of programs about the history and day to day work prior to our visit, so it’s really great to finally be here! I still can’t quite believe the size of the radiotelescopes!
The weather stations have been telling us that although it was – 6 outside it felt more like – 11 due to the wind chill, feeling rather frozen we decided to wind back down the mountain and head back towards Virginia. It seemed the SatNav had other ideas at this point and we had our first SatNav related incident! The robotic voiced woman was insistant on heading us up further into the mountains to cross back into Virginia. These roads, high up in the mountains had not been driven on let alone gritted! Even the locals in their trucks did not venture here. Trying to turn around in pure snow and ice was rather treacherous and not to mention bumpy! After sliding a few times we managed to make it back to sensible roads and have a bit of a word with the SatNav. Ben did an excellent job especially as I was kinda freaking out!
After managing to make it back into town in West Virginia, I was grateful to see civilization again (rather melodramaticly I imagined us getting stuck in the mountains somewhere). We found a cute little local dinner and had some home cooked chili (perfect to warm the cockles) in addition to some naughty home made blueberry pie! I can imagine us rolling back across the ocean to get home at this rate!
Setting off on the road again we emerged back into Virginia and passed through Charlottesville towards Richmond. With icicles hanging off the car the entire day we also did our longest drive roughly 10.5 hours.