Launch Day, or laundry day?

Launch day!  This is the day we feel like we are really launching our trip to the northeast because we actually went northeast!

We left from Greensboro, North Carolina, and drove to Virginia Beach, Virginia.  Before leaving, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the hotel not only had Udi’s gluten-free chocolate muffins readily available (meaning I didn’t have to ask if they had anything gluten-free), they also had Udi’s gluten-free sandwich bread in individual sandwich baggies, so I was able to make a pb/j for the road!

We opted for US highways instead of the interstate.  We’d had enough of I-40 the last couple of days, so we were happy with US 29 north and then US 58 east.  Because DH had done all of the driving since we left Murfreesboro a few days ago, I did the first half of the day.  It was fun driving the hilly roads through southern Virginia.

Along the way, we stopped at the Piedmont Triad VisitorCenter just before leaving North Carolina near Danville.  The sweet older lady who worked there was so happy to provide us with information and brochures on the area should we come back through on our way home.

Our next stop was in South Hill, Virginia, at the Cracker Barrel for a rest stop / driver change.  While there, DH was looking for one of those bobbing birds – you know the kind that bob up and down and eventually have their beak in the glass of water?  My grandpa had one.  DH saw one at Cracker Barrel years ago but didn’t get one, and ever since, any time we stop at a Cracker Barrel, he has to look.  If anyone knows where we can get one like the vintage ones, please let me know!

While continuing the drive towards Virginia Beach, we saw signs for Virginia peanuts.  It reminded me that Virginia peanuts were a thing (I’m a Georgia gal, so you can see why it wasn’t top of mind for me).  I was looking for a place for us to stop to eat a quick car lunch when I saw Parker’s Peanuts on the Google map.  So we stopped at this really cute storefront.  The sweet young lady working there let us sample the different flavors they had, and of course she did the right thing because we bought several bags:  vinegar, garlic, cajun, and, of course, chocolate dipped.  They make them right on premises in small batches, and you can order them or buy them at regional grocery stores.  They reminded me of the peanut mixes we used to get at St. George Island from Sometimes It’s Hotter (now out of business, they retired).

Our planned activity for the day was to tour the USS Wisconsin, the last battleship, built during WWII.  It is harbored in downtown Norfolk at the Nauticus Maritime Center.  We were able to get a place to park in the parking garage just across the street (first two hours were free).  We qualified for senior rate admission.  Because it was so hot today, only two of the decks were open for the self-guided tour.  When we boarded, we noticed that they have already started setting up for the holiday special events they do for Christmas.  I wondered if Santa just loads the presents for the children of Norfolk into the ship’s artillery and shoots it through the 16-inch guns.

While touring the battleship, another guest was just with us and had worked for four years on a US supply ship.  It was fascinating learning about how they were pretty much the uber-delivery / door-dash for military ships at sea.  It’s such an important mission, too, to keep the ships supplied with food and other essentials as well as hauling off the garbage.

We got to look around the main deck, the officers mess hall and quarters, and then on a lower deck, the engine room and medical area.  One of my favorite things to do is go to Lowe’s or Home Depot to the light switch area and flip the switches back and forth.  I love to be the engineer on Smugglers’ Run at Disney’s Hollywood Studios because it is button pushing and switch flipping.  So you just know how much I had to resist flipping the switches when I came across a panel full!

Because the one deck was closed, and because it was so hot, we were done with our tour in less than the two hours we had of free parking.  We bought a souvenir book and postcard, and then left the Nauticus.  There’s a lot to see and do there, in fact, you could probably spend a whole day, but we needed to get going to the hotel.  We stopped for gas at Costco ($3.69/gallon; we had gotten 35.4 MPG from Greensboro to Norfolk).  Then we drove about 30 minutes to the beachfront area of Virginia Beach.

After we checked into the hotel, we found that there were two sets of laundry machines available and working, so we got the laundry started.  While I don’t really enjoy doing laundry away from home, a benefit of multiple machines is that we were done in 90 minutes instead of it taking the whole evening.  While the laundry was going, we got settled into the room; DH took a nap  and I started working on another blog entry.

As you know, I spent quite a bit of time researching places to eat that had good gluten-free options.  The one in Virginia Beach that came up several times was Abbey Road Restaurant and Pub.  They were only two blocks from the hotel so we walked over for dinner.  They play all Beatles music except when they have live musicians.  We were too early for the band tonight, but we enjoyed our meals.  Me, especially, because for the first time in over 12 years I had fried shrimp!  Honest to goodness gluten-free fried shrimp, in its own dedicated fryer, with gluten-free batter – and it was so delicious!  It’s probably a good thing we don’t live in Virginia Beach or I’d be there once a week!

After dinner we found a souvenir shop so I could get a postcard, and then we went down on the beach.  The sand is brown.  It’s finer, too, and when the water hits it on your feet, it turns to mud.  Quite a bit different than the gulf beaches in the panhandle of Florida.  I wanted to put my feet in the Atlantic at Virginia Beach, so I did.

All summer the city has put on a fireworks display on Sunday and Wednesday nights, running through September 6^th.  I was so excited to see this in their most recent newsletter, so when it went past 10 PM and there were no fireworks, I was disappointed.  I did finally find their social media account and saw that for this week, they skipped Wednesday and pushed to the weekend for Labor Day activities.  Oh well.  I’m glad I didn’t rearrange anything just to watch them.

Up next:  checking off another state (Delaware).  I did remember to add the Virginia sticker to my 50 states water bottle.  I can add Maryland and Delaware next.

~ Cindy D.

Time traveling: 1974 and 1781

We did a bit of time traveling today, first to 1974 and then to 1781.  Here’s what happened.

Summer 1974, I spent a week at the Georgia Bible Camp near Valdosta, Georgia.  It was not my first sleep-away camp, but it was my first time at this camp, and I didn’t know any of the other girls.  Being one of the younger campers, I was assigned to the Ina cabin.  It was there that the girl in the bunk next to mine greeted me so warmly and became my first camp friend.  While we lived in different cities, we were pen pals throughout the rest of the year, but every summer through high school, we went to GBC the same week.  When we were in high school, she spent a day with me at school.  I’d visit her, her mom would take us various places, and she even came to visit me in college.  We reconnected online when Facebook took off and have kept up with each other over the last several years through there.

When we first started planning this trip, I looked to see where she lived, and she was in western North Carolina.  It would be too far out of the way going or coming by our original routing, so I didn’t think any more about it.  Until this morning when I was studying the route we were taking from Asheville to Greensboro and noticed the town she used to live in was right on our route.  She had moved several years ago to another town nearby, so I sent her a message to see if she might be available to meet up.  She’s still working, so I knew her schedule might not allow time.

Well, it was my lucky day because she had to take her work car for service, so she was going to be waiting for that, and the timing for us traveling through that part of North Carolina lined up perfectly.  So we got to spend about a half hour together catching up in real life.  And we both said “you haven’t changed a bit” when we saw each other!  It was such a wonderful spontaneous addition to our day!

So from Summer 1974 we continued traveling back until we were in Guilford County, North Carolina, 1781.  This is where we meet Major General Nathanael Greene who commanded the Southern Campaign of the American War for Independence culminated in a battle at the Guilford Courthouse in what is now part of Greensboro, North Carolina.  This is part of the National Park Service.  The visitor center wasn’t open today, but they have several audio tours that you can do through the app.  We did the driving tour which was pretty good, but only after we figured out that the numbers in the beginning don’t line up with the actual stops on the tour!  We eventually got caught up so the narrative matched up with where we were in the park.  Listening to the audio tour is a bit like listening to a podcast.  I think we would have enjoyed this more if we could have seen a film at the Visitor Center or had park staff give us the scoop on how to make the most of our visit.

But besides all that, it still escapes my mind about how battles were fought during this time period.  How close the armed forces had to get to each other before their tactics could be effective.  We just watched the PBS documentary about the American Revolutionary War which is what put the Guilford Courthouse on my radar for visiting, but even after watching that, it’s still something to see the area in person and think of the men who fought for what became our country.  This is just the first of several sites we plan to visit during our trip.  You know how I sometimes say, “another day, another fort”?  Well this trip it’s likely to become “another day, another battle site.”

Other notes from the day.

There was a Costco between the battlefield site and the hotel, so we filled up.  $3.62 per gallon.  The car got 32.x MPG on the last tank including the stop and go of the driving tour at the NPS site.

We ate lunch at the Red Robin located just a few minutes before the battlefield.  We don’t have a Red Robin any more, so this met our criteria.  We ate at one in Columbus, Georgia, for the first time in ages when we were going up to visit DH’s sister before she passed away.  The very first time I had Red Robin was in Vancouver in 2011 when we were going on an Alaskan cruise.

We planned to do laundry but the dryer at the hotel was broken, so we’ll wait until we get to Delaware and try again.  Instead, DH rested while I worked on blog posts, smash book, budget stuff, and reviews for TripAdvisor.  I’m trying to keep up so that the hotels don’t blend into each other in my memory.  Then after 5 PM when the sun wasn’t so strong, we spent some time at the pool.  I like to do that when we have several car days in a row because it helps me stretch better and I can do some water exercises.  And relax!

Coming up:  headed to Virginia so I can add another sticker to my 50 States water bottle and so we can officially start heading to the northeast!  Thanks for reading!

~ Cindy D.

P.S. We had a bit of a problem with the air conditioner going out in our hotel room last night. But I called the front desk and they sent someone up right away to check it out.  They were able to fix it, thankfully.  I didn't want to have to change rooms because we were already ready for bed.  We bring a couple of small travel fans with us that would have probably been sufficient; I would have asked for a fan from the hotel as well.  But yay for maintenance people being available at 9:45 PM.

Wow! Just Wow!!

Wow!  Just wow! 

Those are the words I spoke when I got my first look at the Biltmore House in Asheville, North Carolina.

Even enshrouded in fog, that first glimpse of the mansion is one that will stick with you.

We had tickets for a 10:15 entry into the house for the self-guided audio tour.  They were letting people in regardless of their ticket time this morning, so we went in around 10 AM.

The audio tour device was like a handheld phone, and you dialed up the museum stop you were at and held the device to your ear, just like a phone, to listen to the recorded audio.  There were 35 stops through three floors plus the basement on the tour, and it took us a full two hours to get through the tour.  This included a short rest break on the beautiful porch overlooking the hills (or mountains? I’m never quite sure).

Here are a few of my favorite pictures from the Biltmore House.  There are plenty of places you can read more about the estate, so I won’t go into details in this blog post.  I’ll just show you what I really liked!

Outside the house, there’s a big wall leading down from some of the parking area that has a gently sloping brick path with very short brick steps in the middle.  I nearly missed my footing on it when we went down because I didn’t see that the middle was steps.  I wondered why they made the steps so shallow.  Well, I found out when the Garden shuttle driver told us that the wall was originally used for horses and wagons to bring the rocks down to be used for building the house.  Ah ha! That made sense – the shallow steps in the middle were for the horses and the sloping sides were for the wagon wheels!

Next to the Biltmore House is a shopping and dining area where the stables used to be.  I was able to take a few photos of the shops before they opened.  

After the tour, we bought a book for a keepsake and to read more about what we saw on the tour.  The lady who wrote it has worked for the Biltmore Estate for over 40 years.

On the other side of the house were the gardens.  Another WOW from me – y’all know how #flowersmakemehappy!  We took the shuttle to the conservatory rather than walking because it was getting hotter as the day went on – I’m glad we did because the shuttle driver gave us information about the gardens on the way and on the best way to exit the property if we weren’t going on to the winery.  We wouldn’t have known any of that if we’d decided to just walk.

The gardens were beautiful.  As I walked through, the fragrance was so pleasing.  It made me think of passages in the Bible that talk about the sweet, soothing aroma of offerings made to the Lord.  I wish I could make these pictures scratch-and-sniff so you could enjoy the scent, too.

As we were leaving, we were able to get some good pictures of the Biltmore House without the fog.  All in all, it was a good visit and I’m glad I got to see it!

Other Travel Notes.  

We decided to get a meal out while we were already out, so we checked out the Cornerstone restaurant that was two blocks from the hotel.  It’s family-owned and has been for 18 years.  DH had the meatloaf that he says is the best he’s had, and I had shrimp and grits, only because they were gulf shrimp.  They were really good, and the sweet waitress even asked the cook if he knew where the shrimp came from.  We were wondering if they were from our neck of the woods, but they weren’t.  

We also talked with her about the devastation of Helene from nearly two years ago in this area.  She was able to tell us where some of the worst of it was.  It’s still so sad.

We took advantage of the remote start feature for our car when we were hiking back to the parking lot after the Biltmore tour.  It sure was nice to have the AC already going and the car somewhat cooled.  I will have to remember this for future hot days!

One other thing – while at the Biltmore, a staff person was dusting one of the rooms.  She had a really nice duster that was great for knick-knacks, pictures, etc., that you need to dust but don’t want to have to pick up and set down each time.  I asked her about it and she let me take a picture so I can look for one when we get home.  (Also she said she has to dust the rooms Monday, Wednesday, and Friday each week.)  She said it's made from goat hair.

Thanks for hanging out with us.  We hope you have enjoyed these few pictures and look into a visit to the Biltmore Estate. Have you ever been in person?

Disco Chicken and the 1982 World's Fair

What do Disco Chicken and the 1982 World’s Fair have in common?  Read on to find out!

This would have been our official first day of NERT travel if we hadn’t gone to Tennessee first.  But because we did, we spent the day going from the Nashville area to Asheville, North Carolina.

We started the morning early enough to attend worship services in Cookeville, Tennessee, at the Jere Whitson Road church of Christ where we found out that the preacher there not only grew up in the same hometown that DH did, he went to the same congregation that DH’s parents attended (DH had already left home when this fellow was there).  We often find that the “six degrees of Kevin Bacon” is easily illustrated when visiting churches while traveling.

From Cookeville, we continued heading east on 1-40 towards Knoxville.  This is the only day where driving on the interstate made more sense than other routes, although we did take the backroads for most of the way from Murfreesboro to Cookeville.  We stopped for gas at a Costco about 15 minutes west of Knoxville.  The gas was $3.35 per gallon, best price so far.

Several weeks ago, our niece had mentioned to me a restaurant in Knoxville called Disco Chicken and Donuts.  It is a fully gluten-free food stand in the Kern's Bakery building which now functions as a food hall (glorified food court without the rest of the mall).  Since finding fully gluten-free restaurants is hard when traveling (and even when not), I wanted to try this!

On the way to the restaurant, which is right near UT-Knoxville,  DH noticed the big gold Sunsphere that was from the 1982 World’s Fair that was held in Knoxville.  We have a glass from that World’s Fair but I never remember that the reason we have it is that DH actually went to the World’s Fair when it was in Knoxville 44 years ago!  So that was a treat for him to see the Sunsphere again!

So about that chicken and those donuts!  It’s been so long since I’ve been able to have fried chicken tenders that actually taste good and are gluten-free.  We each got a plate with two chicken strips and fries and a donut hole.  It also came with coleslaw, but I was able to trade-in my coleslaw for an extra donut hole (and the nice guy at the counter actually gave me two extra).  This was a lot of food, but we took half the chicken and donuts to go to have for dinner later on.

While the donuts were my favorite bite(s), DH said he thought the best part of the meal was the gluten-free sweet tea (haha).  And yeah, it was really good sweet tea – after all, we were in the south!

After a late lunch we continued working our way across Tennessee.  It was new territory for me and I was thinking about the destruction the Asheville area had from the storms a few years ago. I wasn’t sure where that all was, so now I want to go look it up.  We took a quick rest stop at the North Carolina welcome center before making it into Asheville.  There was a really pretty yellow flower there. #flowersmakemehappy

Oh, the answer to the question of what do Disco Chicken and the 1982 World’s Fair have in common?  They were both in Knoxville.  And if we hadn’t had to go to Tennessee a few days ago, we wouldn’t have had gluten-free chicken and donuts nor been reminded of DH’s trip to the World’s Fair.  (I sent a picture to our sons and told them to ask their dad about that trip some time.)

~ Cindy D.

Prologue, part two

Prologue, second day.

This morning started out early, mostly because the first morning on central time means we haven’t adjusted yet, so we still wake up the usual time as we do at home.  There was no need to hang around the lodge, and we had a lot to reload into the car after taking out all the food, so we got to it.  Thankfully it was so much cooler and no humidity when we tackled this task.

We normally travel up I-59 to I-24 across Monteagle to get to the greater Nashville area, but after making that trip last week, we decided we wanted to find a better way (for us) to go – one that didn’t involve three lanes of traffic driving at insane rates of speed along winding roads up and down the mountain.  That kind of driving just stresses us out!  So last week I spent some time with the map and found a way to go a little further west and then north to avoid that.

And I have to say, I found a pretty good route.  GPS says it would take about 30 minutes longer, but I’ll drive longer if it means I can arrive without being so stressed.  We headed west through Fort Payne, Alabama, and then over towards Huntsville, before turning north to get to Murfreesboro, Tennessee, where we were spending the day and night.

While planning the route, I had noticed a marker for the North Alabama Railroad Museum.  This is mostly an outdoor park with old trains, but they do have volunteers who docent for the place some days of the week.  During the fall and winter, they also offer special train rides.  We were there early today and took a short walk to look around and stretch our legs before getting back on the road.  We found another Publix for a rest stop in Meridianville, Alabama.

This part of Alabama was all new territory for me, and I have to say it was really beautiful.  I can see why people like living in northern Alabama.

We arrived in Murfreesboro around 11 AM which still gave us plenty of time to get to the funeral home for family visitation.  We stopped to gas up at Costco, which you will probably notice later on becomes a theme!  Gas today was $3.36 per gallon.

We stayed at the same hotel we stayed at last week when we made the trip to see DH’s sister before she passed away.  The hotel was gracious enough to let us check in early (11:30 AM) which gave us time to unload everything we needed for the night and get changed and freshened up before heading to the funeral home.  Our contingency plan was to just change into our dress clothes in the restrooms at the hotel, but we were thankful to not have to do that!

I won’t write about the funeral except to say it was a beautiful tribute to DH’s beautiful sister.  And it was wonderful to see so many people there who loved her dearly.  And to also see our nieces and nephew and great-nieces and great-nephews, and even a great-great-nephew!  (Wow, that makes me sound old!)  And some cousins from various sides of DH’s family.

I’ll leave you with this picture of one of the flower arrangements.  My sister-in-law loved flowers, and these are a lovely reminder of how much she loved each one of us.

~ Cindy D.

Prologue: Northeast Road Trip 2026

Prologue.  That’s what I’m calling the first two days of our Northeast Road Trip, because they are not really about going to the northeast.  Instead, they are about joining DH’s family in Tennessee for the funeral of his beloved sister.  It’s not how we imagined starting this trip, but we cannot imagine being anywhere else now that his sister passed away.  If you’ve been following our planning blog entries, you’ll know we had rearranged the end of our trip so we could get by to see her.  But as her health turned for the worse, we made a quick run to Tennessee last week to be with her and her family.  And as the funeral was scheduled for the day before we were originally going to start the trip, we just left early so we could attend the funeral before going forward with our plans.

That said, we’re still treating the first two days as part of the trip, meaning we’re following our usual road trip practices of staying off the interstates, dining at places we can’t eat at home, enjoying the journey as much as each day’s destination.  I’ll be making another smash book for this trip, and of course there will be pictures!

So let’s get to it!  Our first day had a longer-than-usual drive as we wanted to make it to the DeSoto StatePark Lodge near Fort Payne, Alabama.  We had stayed at the lodge in 2017 and enjoyed the rustic nature of this place constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps beginning in 1934. 

We drove up US27 for much of the way before cutting over to get to the state park.  Along the way we stopped a few times; our rest stop of choice is Publix as they generally have clean restrooms and are air conditioned.  We can also do a little shopping which is what I did at one of our two Publix stops in Georgia where BOGO means buy one at half price.  They had a few things I had wanted to get for the trip, so we took care of that while we were already stopped.

Because we had run this same route just last week, we had figured out the good stops for gas, too.  There’s a Marathon gas station in Bremen that is just the right spot for gassing up to get to Tennessee.  I had been a member of the Marathon Rewards club a while ago, so I signed in again so I can take advantage of some savings.  Which works out good because my next fill up at a Marathon station will get us 25-cents per gallon off.  For this trip, I did our gas budget at $3.75 per gallon and 30 MPG.  Today’s gas was $3.67 per gallon and we were getting about 32 MPG.

The DeSoto State Park is in central time zone, so we arrived before 4 PM.  We were assigned a lodge room that is closer to the parking lot than when we were here last week which turned out to be a really good thing.  There are bears that are active in the area, so that meant we had to make sure to get any and all food out of the car.  In hindsight, if I had thought of that, we probably would not have stayed here because we have brought quite a stash of car snacks and picnic food.  What I thought was going to be an easy unload of two small suitcases, a few electronics, and the toiletries bag became about half the car’s cargo!  And it was all so perfectly tetrised in.  At least I had taken a picture earlier so I can remember how to put it back!

Once we were settled in the room, we went out for a walk.  It’s been so dry in this area that the waterfall nearest to the lodge is dried up.  We walked towards another waterfall for a bit but decided we didn’t want to risk getting ticks or get more sweaty than we already were.  The humidity was pretty bad.  We did find where they have a native plant preservation project going on and a nice path that would be good on a cooler day.

When we were here last week, the Mountain Inn Restaurant wasn’t open for dinner because they are only open on the weekends.  So this time we were able to enjoy a delicious meal.  DH got the cat fish fillets and I had the grilled porkchops.  They took good care in the kitchen to make sure there wasn’t cross-contamination of my food, too.  (If you follow this blog for future entries, I’ll probably mention gluten-free dining many times.)  Also, the restaurant has a beautiful fireplace!

After dinner, DH sat on the porch until the bugs got too bad.  We would recommend staying here maybe in the early spring or late fall rather than August!

So that’s the first day.  Thanks for reading my narration and ramblings about it.

~ Cindy D.

Product Recommendation: Refillable Ice Bags

Earlier this year I was looking for better ice pack options for when we travel.  We have the typical blue blocks that you freeze and they stay cold pretty well, but they are dependent on having access to a freezer to re-chill overnight.  We've found that while many hotels offer a mini-fridge, not all of them have a freezer section, so there's no way to easily re-freeze the ice packs.

We've tried filling ziploc bags for freezers with ice, even double bagging them, but they still end up with a leak or sweating all over everything as the ice melts.  I thought surely someone has to have come up with a solution.  Sure enough, an internet search led me to these reusable ice packs that you fill with ice cubes.  And when the ice melts, you can use the spout on the side to fill your drinking cup with ice cold water.  Most hotels have ice machines, so that makes refilling accessible.  (We have occasionally had a hotel where the ice machine was broken.)  We've tried them out on a few trips we've taken since getting them and so far, so good!  They are pliable enough to smoosh around things in the cooler, too. 

You can also just fill the bag with water or even your favorite drink.  Just freeze it overnight (if you have access to a freezer) and then when it thaws, you'll have it cold but not diluted like when you add ice to a drink.  (Don't you hate it when melting ice dilutes your water? ha ha!)

Not only will we use these in the cooler when driving, we also plan to take them with us on our activities so we have cold water waiting at the car when we get back from a tour, especially while it is still so hot out!

What about you?  What do you use for keeping things cold when traveling or out for a long day in the summer heat?

Don't forget to stay hydrated!

~ Cindy D.

(NOTE: I don't do affiliations or have an amazon store - any product links I post are directly to the product.)