One Last Trip to UVa (this semester)

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Trip to UVa
Liz Toms Well, I'm on the road again. This time I'm driving to Charlottesville, Virginia, again. I had to make one last trip to one of my favorite places before everyone graduates from UVa in a few weeks. Keith and I set off Thursday night after watching The Office (which was insanely hilarious, by the way) and made our way through the night to Virginia. Usually, to cut down on the time and mileage it takes to travel from Champaign to C'ville, I go through Indiana to Dayton, Ohio, where I cut down 35 to Charleston, West Virginia, and then on to Charlottesville. Out of all the driving trips I've made to UVa I've taken this route the majority of the time. The other times I've gone through Kentucky on the route that Rand McNally guides you through. We decided that because we'd be driving through the night and we had time to spare, we'd take this way. Plus, Keith's grandparents live in Lexington, and though we hit Lexington around 5 AM and didn't get a chance to meet them, we did stop by their house outside the city limits and see the area where they reside.

The sun started to come up right as we started to hit the foothills of the Appalachians and got some very nice pictures of it rising over the hills. By time we reached the Kentucky-West Virginia border and crossed into West Virginia, the sun was in the sky and we were amongst mountains. Each time I've driven through this part of the country to visit UVa, I've gotten to see the mountains in different parts of the seasons. This time of the year, the mountains are just turning green... that real fresh, young looking, bright green that newly sprouted buds get. At during the time in the day we were in West Virginia, too, the green mountainside is shrouded in mist and fog and the effect is incredible. I was starting to get drowsy thanks to driving through the night and not getting a lot of sleep in the previous week (wait, when do I ever get sleep?), but the sight of this woke me up and gave me the start of energy that the 3 coffees I had consumed through the night couldn't give me. We pushed along through Charleston to Beckley to White Sulpher Springs and soon enough we were in Virgina. Keith took over when we hit the border and I had a terrible nap from Covington to Lexington.

After we hit Lexington, the drive picked up since we were so close. For some reason, when you drive through the night, the drive has a weird dichotomy and seems to be both the longest trip and shortest trip ever made. None of that matters, though, when you start seeing mile markers listing the distance left to Charlottesville. Soon enough we were merging with 81, and soon after that we were back exclusively on 64. I think the stretch from Staunton to Charlottesville is my favorite leg of the drive, and not even because of the excitement factor of being so close to our destination. I love seeing the Blue Ridge Mountains and driving down a highway separated by a median full of trees. I even love the thrill of knowing I'm speeding and may be caught by a cop car hiding in the tree-lined turn out (then again, I have a good track record of getting out of tickets, sans crying). It reminds me every single time of my first visit to Charlottesville and every visit after that. That last half hour is a culmination of both that individual trek and every other trip to Virginia in my mind. So when I get to Charlottesville, I'm incredibly satisfied.

This time, when we got to UVa, we unloaded our weekend bags and then set back off to the Corner to grab some lunch at Little John's. It was great, and much needed after 12 hours of eating gas station food and drinking gas station coffee (although we did get free Starbucks in Indiana). We also took a little rendezvous out to Haunted Hollow, DMB's recording studio here in C'ville. It was kind of illegal and very exciting. We returned and began the afternoon of relaxing and making margaritas and rum and cokes. That was also great. It was a nice enough day out (with a sweater!) that we were able to take our afternoon outside until Rob wanted to watch the Bulls and we made our way back indoors. When we first arrived, Rob predicted that neither Keith nor myself would last past midnight, but as the night wore on not only did I prove Rob wrong, but I became increasingly more awake. We played a nice game of Apples to Apples before heading out to the bars for a few minutes. It was crowded out thanks to Foxfields being the next day and all (Foxfields being a horse race that all of C'ville basically comes out to and drinks beforehand in the grass) and so we went back to the house to relax a bit more before everyone retired to sleep. I will claim I was forced to bed, as I could stay up a lot longer. Then again, we're going hiking tomorrow and I belive I would like to be in tip top shape. Maybe I'm more tired than I give myself credit for. Or not. Either way, today was an awesome way to start off the weekend, and I can't wait for tomorrow, with or without Foxfields.

PS - a mass collection of photos from this weekend not used in this blog can be found at http://s179.photobucket.com/albums/w293/etoms/Trip%20to%20UVa/

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