originally written: 10/24
So here I am finally sitting down to write about my adventure(s) last week. It has already been about 7 days since the escapades began. I am afraid I may forget some details as per how much time has gone by since.
10/16
About a week ago I began the journey to VA a lot earlier than it ended up I needed to. The trip was roughly 3.5 hrs and I left around 11am. The trip down was really rather uneventful I guess. There was little traffic and I listened to the first 2 CDs of Obama’s book: “the audacity of hope” and my annoying GPS unit. I arrived just before the check in time of 3pm.
I remember after I arrived and checked in at my hotel for the night thinking “ oh great! I planned for everything except for this. I don’t know what to do now, I have more than 24 hrs before I can pick up Nat.” After getting comfortable and acquainted with my room I decided to explore the area, maybe find a way to Nat’s. I ended up grabbing lunch at a local restaurant instead.
The restaurant was rather unique. The place was hidden away in a shopping plaza that looked like it self was recently built and surrounded by Latino/Mexican restaurants. The place was named: Kabob Delicioso. The sign advertised that it served a multi ethnical cuisine that included: American, Latin, Lebanese cuisine and homemade ice cream. I found that the menu also included Mediterranean, Greek, and Mexi tastes. The ice cream looked like it could be gelato, though I didn’t try it. I had chicken wrap with some crazy sauce/dressing on it. I can’t even remember the taste of it, but there were definitely a variety of flavors in it.
The lunch was good but I was still anxious to go find Natalia’s house so I punched her addy up in my GPS and headed out. The GPS told me and I knew that the trip out would be about half an hr so I wasn’t expecting the trip to be all that long. However I ran into some bumper to bumper, full stop traffic at and after an interchange by Leesburg. The traffic was soo slow I was able to take pix of the fall foliage as I went. I tried getting off the highway and finding an alternative route, but my GPS wasn’t helpful and I ended up getting back on the highway after driving around Leesburg a little. The traffic soon let up and I got back up to 60 mph for a couple more miles before I had to get off at her exit. Between the traffic and the beautiful scenery on the side of the highway (maybe the newness of it all too) the trip seemed to be a little longer than I expected.
During the trip along the highway I saw a lot of new homes and developments, which really looked out of place on the rolling hills of this part of Virginia. I supposed during the trip that, that is what Nat’s neighborhood would look like…. It was! The community was up on a hill in a community called Round Hill (idk if that is the town or development. There were no entrance signage) that overlooked the highway I was just on. Most of the homes were townhomes with barely any room between the units on ANY side. However it seemed some of the streets had a green courtyard space. Her street even had a little playground set. When I say it was little I mean it was SMALL. The area the set was in was barely the size of a master bedroom. After passing through her street and taking pictures of houses (I found out later neither was hers) on the street I found the overlook of the highway and took some pics of the surrounding landscape. Then I drove around the neighborhood and discovered just how NEW this neighborhood really was. There were streets with homes in every state of being built. Everything from pipes sticking out of the ground for the water main, to half done foundations, to fully built homes that still looked like either: a. they were still in need of interior work, or b. did not have a family yet. All and all in some ways this place looked like a nice place to raise a family, although I don’t know if I would want to live in that compact of a development. (I think it has to do with where I currently live)
On my trip back to my hotel in sterling I still had a lot of time to kill so I decided to take a tour and get a little lost in Leesburg. One of the first things I found was a Roy Rogers right across the street from a Starbucks in what also looked like a rather young shopping plaza district. As young as 10-15 yrs though I guess. However “downtown” or “main street” Leesburg was very nice and quaint. After finding a public parking lot and walking around for just like 5 or 10 minutes I was quickly reminded of the village in Allaire State Park, here in jersey. There was smells of firewood or charcoal burning and most of the buildings surrounding the parking lot were had to have been over a century and a half old. It was quite nice. Most of the storefronts and even the law offices had signs that hung off the store in a classic sense. Yet a few blocks away I found the old small town theater that I had seen earlier. I think it said it still had $1 or $2 movies. This little town of Leesburg was like a little city it was even the county seat of the (I forget the name of) county it was in. Although I think I only saw 2 bars/taverns in the town (kinda lame). But at least now I knew why everyone had to go to DC for a good time. The downtown area also had a lot of little shops and restaurants. Unfortunately though it looked like they all close before sundown and it was about 6pm by the time I arrived in town. So I left town with just a bunch of pictures, thinking: “I should probably get my grandmother down here.”
Even before driving down I determined that I did not want to deal with the Washington area much. I did not want to go into downtown DC for anything. I felt like I had done most of what the city had to offer and kind of bored of it. So the next day thanks to advice from a guy I talked to at the hotel the night before I went to the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum by the Dulles airport.
10/17
I was kind of surprised that there was a second location for the museum. The place ended up being REALLY big. I don’t think that there was an aircraft that wasn’t included at this place! Their 4 biggest (real) pieces were an SR-71 directly from the Skunk works in Cali, the prototype Space Shuttle Enterprise, the B-29 super fortress: the Enola Gay, and the Concord. But also included a Joint Strike fighter (F-22 I think), F-14 tomcat, some cold war era helicopters and MIG fighters as well as may other aircraft and components.
The gentleman that advised me on going to the museum told me that there were more than enough things to see and do there… and he was correct! I brought both my didgi camera and video cam into the place. I took soo many pics and video of everything in the place. I think I went through like 4 AA batteries (incl. 2 that I bought at the gift shop and told the guy I didn’t need 4…dumb!) in my didgi and def all the battery on the vid cam. I definitely filled them with images of everything in the place. I remember as I was touring that I was a little stressed and worried if I would be able to get images of the Enola Gay, as per I wasted soo much battery and space on both cams on everything else, and the plane ended up being the last exhibit I went to see specifically.
After all the touring of the exhibits I still had like 3 hrs to kill before I could pick up Natalia, so I bought tickets for the flight simulator and an IMAX show they had. The simulator was fun and rather ridiculous. It was of some kind of fighter plane, that I can’t remember which. They had me: 1. Watch a video on how to use it; 2. Empty my pockets into a locker, however I left some change in my 5th pocket; 3. Get into the simulator and be strapped in like it was a rollercoaster with both 2 shoulder straps and a roll bar like on the batman ride at 6 flags. When the bar came down I asked the guy if it was supposed to be soo tight, because I could hardly breath with it. He said if it wasn’t like that the machine wouldn’t work. It ended up being a little fun but scary, as a part of the loading process the machine rolled upside down. Even though I was kind of expecting that it still shocked me when my feet ended up on the ceiling thanks to gravity. I think some of my coin fell out too. The machine was like a really big video game… that moved! Lol! I could have shot down other aircraft, but I couldn’t keep the damn thing level!
The IMAX show I expected to be of that Planet Earth series seen on the Discovery Channel, but it was a special movie made for the Smithsonian by astronauts about earth and its features. It was similar to what the Discovery Channel had I guess, although whereas the Disc Chan showed nature and animals, this showed the physical characteristics of earth.
The museum also had a mock up of an airport control tower attached to it. You could see it from the parking lot, yet I think I almost left with out going in it. From the top you could see a 360 of the surrounding area. It was almost all trees and hills. Close by though was the runway for Dulles airport and you could watch as planes landed. You could also listen into the flight controllers of the airport talking to those aircraft. On another floor of the tower was a special little museum/exhibit dedicated to flight control towers and the system. At the center there was a map and computer/radar display like you would find in such a control tower. I was disappointed when I found out it was of Newark international airport. I was like: ”wtf?! If I wanted to see the radar/map of the Newark/NY area I would have stayed in Jersey!” but I figured they probably did the display that way was for security purposes. I mean a. it is an airport and b. it is the airport near WA, D.C. it could have Air Force One on the radar.
Even after wasting all this time I still had a good half hr or so before I had to get on the road and take the 30+ min trip to pick up Nat, so I went to a little historic park that I saw on the way into the museum. I was expecting a village something like Allaire, but it wasn’t. I was expecting some trails to walk around on, but there weren’t really. What it really was, was a pre-Civil War estate/plantation, just a house, a couple of buildings and a slave quarters. For a place with two parking lots I think I was expecting more. I remember thinking it was quite nice though. It was right off the highway, yet hidden away. In the park you wouldn’t know that there was a highway nearby, and vice-versa. After a brisk walk around the park and not finding any well-beaten paths to walk on I headed back to my car.
Even with the little detour to this plantation I still had some more time to kill. So I figured to blaze some new paths to get to Round hill. Finding different routes with my GPS is not that easy. But good sense of direction and adventure runs in my family. Along this alternative route I discovered a little farm called: “Frying Pan Farm Park.” So I stopped to walk around and take some more pictures. I think every farm animal was on this farm, even peacocks! Though I don’t know how those are farm animals?
As I walked around the farm some rather funny things (or atleast to me) happened. The first thing I remember is how as I was taking pictures I came across 2 black cows (or some form of cattle). The first of which I think was a bull, and I took a rather normal pic of it. The second I saw after walking behind one of the barns/sheds. When it came in back of it towards a smaller pen I thought it with the other cows/animals in the background might make a nice picture. So I brought up my camera for a pic and as I was about to take a pic I found out why the cow had come back there… lets just say it seems that animals require privacy for some things as well.
I walked around the farm some more then headed back to my car some more.
On my way back was a coral for calves, and maybe a goat or two that I hadn’t looked at earlier. So I approached the pen for some pictures and a goat in it approached me. I didn’t do anything to attract its attention. I guess he is just used to the attention people and was expecting either food or a petting. I backed off a little as he approached and he stuck his head through the bars in the fence. I remember wanting to ask it “what do you want?” As I walked along the fence to get back to my car the goat followed me. I kept thinking “what does he want?” and “what is he going to do when we get to the end of the coral?” I thought it was funny how he followed me with just one eye, almost poking through the bars in the fence. I wasn’t really afraid, but there was a sign as I came in that said not to feed or pet the animals; so I stayed my distance from the goat. I think I was also afraid of getting my hands dirty, as I would see Nat, and didn’t have plans to find a place to wash.
Near 5pm I went to my car and navigated my way back to Round Hill, hitting the same amount of traffic in just about the same spot as the day before.
To be continued…
No comments:
Post a Comment