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Day one of the Southern coast road trip Around March I had the urge to go on a road trip like we see on TV shows and in movies. The idea of exploring without schedules and bonding with other girls sounded like a great idea. So I began contacting fun people and I lucked out in getting Mascha, Rith, and Shay to sign on. Rith drew up a tentative itinerary for us and we made our plans. By the time May 16th came around, I was super antsy to go! The plan was to travel down the Southern coast into Florida and back up, but with poor weather and wildfires all over Florida, we opted not to go all the way down into the peninsula. We would remain in the South for the most part. I stayed up all night rather than try to wake up at 2 am. It was
a decision that would later hurt me very, very much, but it seemed
like a good idea at the time. I caught a 7 am flight out of Denver
to Atlanta, an airport which reminds me of a school. No frills, no
decoration, no architecture, and packed with people. Ugh. Fortunately
my layover was only a half hour or so. Then I caught my last flight
to Richmond. By the way I was flying on AirTran, which I have never
heard of in my life, but turned out to be fine :) Into RIC I landed,
onto the first runway with grass on the field! and met Rith, who,
btw, is also keeping track of this week's goings-on in her journal,
as well. Rith was looking interesting, wearing jeans, a plaid skirt
over it, a T-shirt, and a leather jacket. Oh, and she had glitter
on her cheeks. Hehe. She and I caught a cab to our ultra deluxe hotel,
the Best Value Inn, which Here's the lovely Rith, open for business inside our room: We were both exhausted and hungry, so on the recommendation of the
front desk clerk we wandered on over to Ma & Pa's Diner, lol. There,
I experienced backfin crabcakes (what the hell is backfin?), with
fried apples and lima beans. I go, 'which side dish do you recommend?'
The server says, 'oh, the limas are good'. Okay, they tasted like
lima beans. They weren't even cooked in butter or anything. They were
just lima beans reheated. Which makes me wonder what isn't
good. Exhausted, we trucked back to our lovely motel and proceeded
to pass out for a couple of hours. Then we woke up and we were hungry
again! Yay! So this time we walked past Ma & Pa's and headed to the
Waffle House, which Rith had recommended. Yummy. I ordered a chocolate
chip pancake, a cheeseburger, and my first order of grits with cheese.
Lovin' me some grits (I looked like a weird cartoon character): Here's Rith, looking like an angry hooker: Feeling like complete pigs, we returned to our rooms to await the
much anticipated arrival of Shay (we had nothing better to do). Years
later she arrived, looking like she'd walked the entire distance to
Virginia, hehe: She immediately changed into her pajamas and felt much better as
you can see: Then we returned to the Waffle House again! Holy moly. Thankfully
I resisted ordering a grilled cheese sandwich and allowed Shay to
stuff herself by herself. 1:30 am found us still sitting in the damned
Waffle House, so we left. And now we're all smelly and tired and dreading
waking up tomorrow to go back to the Richmond airport to pick up Mascha
Day Two As yucky as the Best Value Inn appeared, it's beds were great. Or
maybe we were just so tired we would've passed out anywhere. I lucked
out and got a bed to myself while the two sluts -- er, Shay and Rith,
shared a bed (and hands, hehe, j/k). Hee! They're gonna kill me. Housekeeping
graciously double-checked on us to make sure we didn't sleep in by
knocking on the door an hour before our alarm was set to go off. After
grumbling and enjoying our showers -- or more accurately, our 'sprinkles'
-- we hoofed all our luggage to Aunt Sarah's Pancake House. I had
the corn berry, which were corn pancakes with blueberries. The girls
ate other stuff. Shay and General Lee: Then we caught a cab out of the Best Value back to the Richmond Airport
to meet Mascha, who'd flown in from Scotland via New York. She was
right where she was supposed to be, lucky for her, so we picked up
our shiny silver Dodge Stratus and headed out of Virginia to meet
up with Heartfelt in D.C. The hookers in the backseat:
We actually ended up picking up Heartfelt at a metro station in Alexandria
and then drove up to D.C. under her guidance. Boy were we lucky to
have Heartfelt! She lives in the area and also works there, so she
was the ultimate tour guide in a confusing and traffic-congested tourist
area. She directed us to a choice parking spot (after switching places
behind the wheel so she could parallel park our car) in front of the
National Museum of the American Indian. We had a quick snack in the
cafeteria there -- Shay and Rith both eating buffalo -- before we
began our trek up to a good intersection for some pics of the Capitol
building. Me. The gang, now with Mascha and Heartfelt. Then we turned in the opposite direction and headed down the Washington
Mall. Whenever they showed the Mall on TV it gave me the impression
of lush, manicured grasses. It's pretty field-like in reality, and
it's tremendously long. Distances are measured in miles. The Washington
Monument was our destination and it didn't seem to be getting any
closer (but it did, eventually). I did my first cartwheel in eons
on the lawn of the Mall and promptly strained my groin muscle :) The
road trip girls lounging around at the base of the Monument: It's a pretty tall structure, made out of marble blocks and surrounded
by a ring of American flags. It's neat. Then we continued down the
Mall and hit the World War Two Memorial, which is really cool. There's a water feature in the center, and columns representing each
state surrounding it: Stars for fallen soldiers: It was pretty windy and slightly overcast up until we came to the
WWII memorial, after that it was warmer and sunnier. We walked amidst
the trees, dodging cyclones of gnats, to reach the Lincoln Memorial.
This thing is huge and is a visual wonder. I was surprised by the
lack of crowding around it. It's big! The Gettysburg Address is carved into one adjacent wall, and the
Emancipation Proclamation is on the other. It makes you stand there
and marvel at what a kick-ass president Lincoln was. View from the
Lincoln Memorial: I wanted to see the White House since we're in D.C., so Heartfelt
led us in that direction. We stopped and saw the Vietnam War Memorial,
where I got a little choked up. My dad didn't die in the war, but
I know an innocent part of him did die while he was in service and
that makes me tremendously sad. Next we headed for the White House, after I bought some souvenir
shirts for my mom and me under the mistaken assumption that I'd negotiated
a good bargin (a cheaper shirt stand would rear it's ugly head a few
blocks later). The White House was a huge surprise. Or make that,
it wasn't huge. We were just walking along, and we see this
white house behind a fence. We've seen tons of majestic and important-looking
buildings by now, so this one didn't make me look twice. But it did
look familiar, like a scaled down version of the white house. But
I thought, this can't be the White House. It had a small yard,
only one guard standing in front, and there was only a small crowd
of school kids in front of the fence, not a whole gaggle of tourists.
Well, obviously I was wrong. I was underwhelmed. Really, really
underwhelmed. It looks like a house with a modest yard and a drive
way. It was so weird! From the way it's always filmed,I thought there
were a hundred yards of grass in front of it and a long, dramatic
driveway. Uh, no. We took anti-clamatic pics, anyway, because hey,
this is still the White House. We walked on, passing the FBI Building and the National Archives.
It finally started to rain as we walked back to our car, but it only
escalated to heavy sprinkles. By the time we found our car, it felt
like we'd walked across the entire East coast. But the day wasn't
over! We had to eat, and Heartfelt took us to a soul food restaurant
which is famous in D.C., the Florida Avenue Grill. We sat at the counter
and ordered us some soul food goodness. I got catfish with the best
collard greens ever, macaroni and cheese, and soft, warm cornbread.
It was great. And the elderly Black woman serving us was straight
out of a TV show. She was so sweet. She gave Mascha a free bowl of
beans and cornbread because they were out of the soup she had asked
for. Stuffed, and practically comatose at this point, we headed to Heartfelt's
house in Maryland, where she has graciously allowed us to spend the
night. And omg, her place is a crazy house of manga and yaoi! It's
everywhere! I have never seen so much product outside of a store.
Wow. I'd take pictures to amaze you, but she probably wouldn't like
that, lol. So we're going to chill and rest up after our busy day
:) A hundred thousand thanks to Heartfelt, who was the best tour guide,
ever. She made this day a fantastic one :) Then Mascha and I boarded Lightship 116, "Chesapeake", which at the
time was the most modern ship in the US Lighthouse Service, circa
1930s. She had a crew of 16. This was a really small ship. The tour
was about five minutes long. Mascha, control freak, tried to alter
our course: It was pretty funny because we were all snapping a ton of pictures
of this guy and ignoring everything else in the room of actual historical
interest. Next stop was the cooper's, where the guys made barrels
and buckets: Rith talked to this guy and found out workers there start off around
$8-$9/hour. Then we checked out the seamstress': This was interesting because I learned from the lady here that women
wore detachatable basket-like cloth pockets under their dresses where
they could hold all sorts of things. This kept their hands free, which
was a must back then. A pic in a pretty area: I took a pic of the cute dolls for sale so I wouldn't have to buy
any: We walked for quite a while, at least two miles. It was fairly crowded
with school groups, so lots of kids, but they weren't too annoying
and we didn't have to wait for anything for any length of time. Eventually
we had to eat, so we chose the Kings Arms Tavern because it offered
some authentic period food. I had game sausage (no idea what type
of game) with pickled cabbage and apple butter, and raspberry wine.
Dessert was our cute and super nice waiter: Stuffed, we headed on over to the shoemaker: The blacksmith, just as they were closing up: And then of course we had to throw in the requested bondage: These things were really heavy! This would've been nice to ride, but our budget probably wouldn't
have allowed it so we settled with a picture: By five o'clock we were bushed. We'd been walking for a long time
without any sitting breaks. We did a little shopping in an area beside
the college, including in a Scottish gift shop: Then we returned to our hotel for a break. Shay promptly fell asleep
and I tried to get some writing done. All too soon, however, it was
time to return to Colonial Williamsburg for a ghost lantern tour.
This tour was a guided walk through all the areas we'd visited during
the day, exploring the haunted areas and legends. It was supposed
to last an hour and a half. Our confederate soldier guide, telling
about a ghost in the graveyard: However, our guide really loved his job because an hour and
a half later we were only halfway done. My back was killing me, plus
I really needed to get back and work on the update. So Shay, Rith
and I ended up abandoning Mascha to the tour while we headed back
to the hotel. Unfortunately, we realized by the time we reached our
hotel we'd have to turn around and come back for Mascha, so we camped
out at a Dunkin Donuts and then returned to Williamsburg and waited
there until the tour finally wound up after a total of 3 hours. Mascha
loved it and learned a ton. Back in the hotel: Needless to say, the girls slept very well, while I toiled away into
the night, trying to finish up the update. Day Five Today we drove out of Virginia into North Carolina. Our goal for
the day was Raleigh, the capitol city. We had no idea where we were
headed. None of us knew anything about the area, so we just looked
for signs and eventually followed directions to the visitors center.
This turned out to be a good choice because it brought us to an area
near some museums. We entered a museum and learned from the docents
that an art festival was being held a couple of blocks away, so we
set off for that. On the way we passed the capitol building: We came upon the festival shortly after, grateful for our luck. It
was a fairly large festival with live music and plenty of food. It
was very hot and humid, which was the only bummer. I bought a piece
of art from a funky artist. This lady was crazy trusting. When I asked
her if she accepted credit cards, she goes, "No, but if you give me
your address I'll send you a bill and you can mail me a check."! The
thing I bought wasn't even that cheap ($95) but she was completely
unconcerned with being stiffed. Amazing. You can kinda see what I
bought. It's a woman/rabbit creature holding a rabbit puppet: Here's a musician playing with hands, feet and mouth: This stall had some twisty, weird brooms. I really liked them: I eventually got hungry and ordered a heaping plate of butterflied
potatoes, extra grease. Mmmm: Mascha was enjoying her trip this much: After the festival we headed back to the museums. We really wanted
to check out the museum of natural history, but we walked in and the
guards told us we had four minutes until closing. D'oh! So we ran
through, taking quick pictures. It was too bad, because the exhibits
looked great. The obligatory prehistoric shark jaw picture: Some weird animal as large as a whale and with teeth like a Great
White: Outside, after we were kicked out: Shay is very ticklish :) Hamming it up because I'm getting tired of smiling for photos: Rith gave some local friends a call and we met up with them briefly
at Borders. (They told Rith's girlfriend I was an 'ice bitch', those
bitches! lol) We then bought some manga and got a rec on a hotel and
restaurant from the cute info desk boy. That night we ate sushi and
got soo stuffed. Note to self: do not end a meal with a cheesecake
battered in tempura and then fried. Tasty, but holy cow, it must've
been 5000 calories. So my impression of our brief visit to Raleigh:
friendly people, hot and humid. Days Six & Seven We'd considered a bunch of different routes but Rith ended up finding
a cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains which sounded pretty cool, so
that's where we headed. When we finally came upon the cabin, er, I
was a little worried: As you can see, it was a tad bit, well, rustic. I personally loathe
hard-core camping. One of my favorite parts about traveling is checking
into hotels. I'm serious. So when we drove up to this gem, well, let's
say I was hardly jumping for joy. Rith claimed the place was perfectly
fine. It didn't have a shower, just a tub out back, but there was
a working toilet inside. There were supposed to be cots inside, but
the ones I saw were all rusted and had spiders in 'em, so I passed.
Only two of the windows were broken, so that was good. Screens were
still intact so they kept the flying insects out. Haha, just kidding!
We weren't staying in that place. Here's where we stayed: We had the top cabin, and it was pretty darned nice. Two full bathrooms,
a kitchen with all appliances, three beds and a daybed, a propane
grill, wireless and satellite TV. Sweet! Now that's the kind
of roughing I like, lol. Here's a shot of the ladder leading up to
the loft, where there were a couple of beds. Kitchen to the left,
a bedroom on the right: View of the loft, where Shay and Rith would eventually do their nastiness:
Here's the living room. We're such losers: The downstairs cabin had a swing on their porch, and since no one
had booked the cabin while we were there, we took advantage of the
swing: We were right by a little stream with a pond, too: Good 'ol girls in the Blue Ridge Mountains: That night was spent hanging out and talking. The next day we ventured
into the exciting city of Asheville. We kinda dropped the ball here,
because we had no concrete plans to explore Asheville, nor did we
know where we were. Our one plan of going canoeing or kayaking was
nixed because it was raining. So we wandered downtown Asheville, discovering
the museums were closed and there was nothing to do. Trying to find
something to do in Asheville: Rith wrangled herself up a pig: We ended up window shopping and having dinner in a Thai place. Afterwards,
we stocked up on food and booze at a grocery store in preparation
of a drunken night. There was much drinking of cheap wine. Someone
went nuts with the spanking, and that's all I'm going to say about
that! Days Eight & Nine Amazingly, we all woke up in relatively good condition, considering
all the cheap booze we'd ingested. Today we were headed into Atlanta.
It was hot today, but fortunately not too humid. Rith is from Atlanta,
so she knew the area and was our tour guide. She first took us to
a Japanese bookstore, where I noticed all the books were in Japanese.
Then she directed us to an Asian market, where we loaded up on unidentifiable
food stuffs in cute packaging. Then we drove to the World of Coke,
by the Atlanta Underground. This was fairly fun for an amusement celebrating
a corporation, lol. You walk by exhibits of Coke advertising programs and if you're desperate
you sit in theaters and watch videos about the history of Coke and
their commercials. A soda jerk gave us a little demonstration on how
soda fountain Cokes were poured. It was kind of interesting: Foolin' around: Obligatory pic with the polar bear (who would moan, btw, every time
someone got near him. Way disturbing): The best part was when we got to taste Coke products from around
the world. The nastiest was Beverly, a product from Italy that's flavored
with grapefruit rinds. Yes, it tastes as delicious as it sounds. Ick!!
The best was a ginger beer from South Africa. Shay wouldn't stop drinking
and finally a worker had to tell her to stop: Mascha liked the Beverly, but that's because she's European and weird
that way :P In the gift store I bought a cool Hi-C shirt, and a Coke hat. We
wandered over to the Atlanta Underground, basically a mall, but didn't
do much there. We'd been driving for a while, so we all voted to find
our hotel. We checked into a Comfort Inn by the airport, and then
drove into town to meet with Rith's friends at Outwrite Books, a gay
bookstore. That was pretty fun for a while. Then we all went to a
tavern for dinner. The music was so damned loud it was impossible
to have a conversation, which sucked, because it would have been nice
to actually socialize with Rith's friends. I ordered a burger with
pimento spread since the menu claimed it was a Southern thing. It
just tasted like Velveeta, though. After dinner we all went to an
adult video store, although we mostly checked out the T-shirts and
postcards. It closed really early, weirdly enough. Who doesn't want
porn after midnight? We bid goodbye to Rith's friends and returned
to the hotel for a last bit of chatting and Shay molestation. Mascha
put earplugs in because she was sick of it, lol. The next day we returned
the rental car. Important tip: don't rent a Thrifty rental car that
needs to be dropped off at Atlanta airport, because the return center
isn't at the airport, yet no one sees fit to tell you this ahead of
time. We had to drove all over the place trying to find it, couldn't
find it, and eventually had to drive into Hertz and use their phone
to get directions. Anyway, we're all home now, obviously, and I hope
you enjoyed the reports. I had a great time, and I think the girls
did, too. Next road trip will be out in the boonies :P -- Tricia May 25, 2006 |
