I stayed up way too late working on the reports we are putting out for the Port of Long Beach and I’m quite exhausted, to say the least. Today was jam packed pull of fun and it all started at 6 AM. I practically crawled to the car after an hour of sleep and prayed Dan wouldn’t ask me to drive. After a quick drive by the UVA campus in daylight (to see the Lawn and the Rotunda at Ed’s recommendation – a great one by the way, we headed West towards the Blue Ridge Mountains.

We initially missed the turn onto Skyline Drive, but after stopping to chat with a chatty old Vietnam vet, we got on the right track and began the 105 miles along the ridge of the mountains. The skyline drive is basically a road that winds along the ridge of the Blue Ridge Mountains from south western Virginia through north western Virginia. We got the recommendation from Hazel (the lady at the Virginia, NC border) yesterday and realized we HAD to take the detour. There were deer littering the sides of the road the entire drive, which I’m sure made Dan a little nervous, but other than that, it was a great drive. It was a beautiful day, with decent visibility and although we didn’t time it perfectly to see the fall colors, we still got quite a few great landscape panoramas.

About two thirds of the way through the drive we stopped to take a short 2 mile hike up to the top of the Little Stony Man Cliffs. The large boulders jutted out over the valley of trees below and we vegged out on the rocks for about 30 minutes just taking in the solitude and the early morning breeze. The weather was still on our side today, as it has been for the entire trip thus far. It was sunny and 65 the whole drive; perfect windows down sweatshirt weather. After doing our fair share of screaming random phrases out to the echoing cliffs in the distance and me scaring Dan by standing too close to the edge (I was going to test out the phrase “I lean against the wind, pretend that I am weightless”, but I decided against it as the odds of me falling over a 100 ft. cliff seemed too high).

From here we drove to West Virginia to stop at Charlestown and the Dairy Queen hosted there. After scarfing a dip cone, we turned back east and started the quick drive to Washington D.C. Once we arrived, we were greeted by a very enthusiastic cousin (Miss Jennifer) and her amazingly adorable colonial cottage in Fairfax. Her husband Tommy cooked us up an AMAZING meal complete with steaks on the grill, sweet potatoes and grilled mushrooms & onions. I ate for about an hour straight (I was not about to leave food on that plate) and we washed everything down with some brew before settling in front of the fire in the living room. I’ve got a decent amount of work to do tonight, but I have a killer headache, so I may have to just surrender to my sickness and go to bed. Work is giving me a stress cold right now, so hopefully, a little break this week will be just the medicine I need!

XOXO

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