Ruly Road Trip 2012 – Day 1

The first day our trip almost ended before it began.

Our story begins late Friday evening when I am still packing (or more truthfully, just beginning to pack) for our trip.  I have most of the clothes spread out on the bed as I hear a thunderstorm outside.

“Oh good, we could use the rain,” I thought and continued to pack.

A few minutes later the lights flickered a bit.  Then they went out.

There was a cry for help from my 4-year old who found herself stranded in a nearby room in the dark.  My first concern was to find my son who had just crawled out of the bedroom and might head for the stairs.  I scooped up my daughter and found my son safe in the bathroom, confused by the darkness but unafraid.

In the meantime, my husband found flashlights and my eldest daughter and we regrouped in the hallway.

“It’s going to be tough packing in the dark,” I thought.

About that moment, the lights came back on.  We warned our children that they might go out again and not to stay too far away from a flashlight.  The girls loved hearing this news and began turning on and off the flashlights repeatedly.

I tried to turn the radio on to check if there were any weather alerts.  Just as I was about to get a signal, the power went out again.  We looked outside at the darkness and we saw a sky full of lightning and trees swaying wildly.

“Do you think it’s a tornado?” I asked my husband.  “Do we need to go to the basement.”

“No,” he said calmly, with nothing to support his assessment other than gut instinct.

Soon, the lights flickered again, then came back on and miraculously stayed on.  We picked up an Internet radio signal and learned that a large thunderstorm was brewing but that it would pass in an hour.  They warned the worst of the storm was right in our area.

“Yeah, we know!” we told the radio obnoxiously.

I finished packing and the storm died down.  We went to sleep, loaded the car and got on our way.

We stopped to see our dear friend “Miss” first.

“Did you lose power in the storm?” she asked.

We relayed our experience.  She noted she had lost Internet access and possibly a tree.  We commiserated and she wished us a safe journey.

We spotted several trees and tree branches down on our route but all the roads were clear.  Our first stop was Lexington, Virginia for lunch.

We used TripAdvisor to locate a good restaurant called Pure Eats. On the door was a sign that due to the storm, credit card machines were down and it was cash only. Fortunately, we had cash on us so we went in for lunch.We ate burgers, milkshakes and the house specialty, fried potato salad.  Here in the south, fried food is an art form, so of course, I had to taste. Delicious!  Served with a spicy dipping sauce.

For dessert, my daughters tried some of the unique handmade doughnuts.  Loved the creativity of the “fireworks” doughnuts with pop rocks candy on them.

As we ate, a steady stream of locals straggled in complaining that they were out of power and needed lunch. We noted this with concerned amusement, finished our lunch and got back on the road to West Virginia.

We stopped at Grandview, part of the New River Gorge National Park.

We probably should have taken more note of the downed trees

and the ranger station closed due to lack of electricity

but we were more interested in taking in the “Grand View,” which feels sort of like a greener, shadier version of the Grand Canyon.

We walked along the Grandview Rim Trail beneath tunnels of blooming rhododendrons.

Although temperatures were edging above one hundred degrees, the park was shady and the park brochure boasted “cold-to-the-touch sandstone walls . . . even on the hottest day.”  True!  We learned.

We were a bit too hot and tired to make it all the way down the trail to the “natural air conditioner” supposedly blowing out of one of the rocks and loaded back into the car.

That’s where things got exciting.

Continue reading: A White-Knuckle Drive Through West Virginia