I'm starting this on the day before I left for my trip up north. Yes, I'm finally writing about my late September trip. As I was packing I happened across Joe's DVD on photography. I decided to pop it in and watch it. I bought the thing in June and still hadn't watched it. There's a little 12 minute thing with suggestions/recommendations on the gear to bring on an outing and how to prepare. One of the things he mentioned was to charge camera batteries when you return from your day out so that they are ready for shooting the next day. That's when I shouted "Shit! That's what I'm forgetting...I haven't charged my batteries in about a week." I paused the DVD while I started charging my batteries. The main part of the DVD was interesting. I got some insight in to the way he approaches photography and picked up some neat things to try the next time I was out shooting (for me...in about a day). When I had finished watching the entire DVD I resumed getting my camera stuff and other electronics together. I pulled out the pen drive that I have on my car MP3 player and filled it with music (1GB). I wondered how far I would get before it repeated itself.
I was going to start out very early on Thursday (20 September), but decided that I would wait since the weather to the north wasn't looking like it would be great for driving. I ended up leaving the house around 1215 in the afternoon. I wasn't doing too badly for time. I made it to Georgia in about 3 and a half hours. I didn't stop for fuel until in South Carolina. I put 360 miles on the tank; I didn't feel it necessary to push it. I could've put well over 400 before I really needed to stop. As I drove I saw some things that I thought about stopping to photograph, but traffic wasn't all that conducive to the idea. Unfortunately most of what I saw that I really would've liked to photograph was around construction zones where there wasn't a good place to pull off of the road. I saw a family of wild pigs next to the interstate. They were grazing on grass in about three inches of water. I was glad when I got off of I-95 and on to I-26. The road was getting really rough. Those stress joints that are in the road were no longer stress joints. They were full splits in the road that I knew was tearing up the alignment on the van. There were also pot holes that spanned entire lanes of the highway. It was finally getting dark when I pulled on to I-77. As I drove through North Carolina I debated whether or not I wanted to try to make it all the way through Virginia, or if I wanted to stop for the night. I hadn't really budgeted to stop at a motel. I didn't want to stop at a rest area in Virginia. I didn't want to stop that early in the evening; it was only 2130. I didn't want to start in to Virginia and have to commit to it making it through in one shot. The problem is that radar detectors are illegal in VA. I didn't want to stop at a rest area and have some security guard find the thing. I also didn't want to pull the van apart to disconnect the damn thing for a three and a half hour leg of the drive. I figured that if I stopped at a motel, then law enforcement wouldn't find it there. While I was driving I'd at least keep the thing turned off and make sure that I didn't get stopped for whatever reason. I stopped at a Days Inn in North Carolina to make reservations farther up the road. I figured that I'd stop a little early (for me), and then head out at a decent hour in the morning.
I ended up stopping in Fancy Gap, VA. When I got out of the van I found I had lost the trim ring off of the right front tire. That kinda irked me. I figure that I lost it somewhere in northern Georgia or southern South Carolina when I-95 was so rough. I noticed when I went to back up the van to the motel room that the transmission had gotten pretty warm. It was really hesitant about going into reverse. After dropping my stuff off in the room (around 2330) I took the van around the building a couple of times to make sure that everything was okay mechanically. I didn't have any doubts that the van would get me to my destination and back to Florida okay. Just for good measure I made sure to pack my tools and the fluids that the thing requires (oil, coolant, transmission fluid, brake fluid, power steering fluid). I looked at it like I looked at the cell phone I bought before my last road trip in 2004 when I went to see Tess and Elaine. I didn't think I'd need them and it turned out that I didn't need them. It was a "just in case" sort of thing. After parking the van for the night I went inside to settle for a while. Fancy Gap wasn't as fancy as I remembered it. For the time (more than ten years ago) it was really advanced. I swear they had the same TVs that they had ten years ago. Remember the old red digital channel readout on the front of the TVs? This one had them. The phone was one of the older touch-tone phones that looked very much like an old rotary phone. The alarm clock was newer though. :) I got in just in time to watch Jay Leno.
I woke up around 0700 in the morning and packed out my stuff. I checked out of the motel and headed to the van. I remembered why I liked Fancy Gap...the view of the mountains. I pulled out my camera and took a few photos. The mountains had some gray and blue clouds overhead and some had a smoky fog over them. I went down the hill and got fuel again before I got back on the road. The roads were wide open and clear all the way up to one spot in Pennsylvania where there was a slow down due to construction. It amazes me how stupid people get when it comes to construction zones. Things slowed down for about seven miles. Shortly after crossing into Pennsylvania (a little before the slowdown), my MP3 player started its list again. That came out to around 18 hours of music. :)
I got to the fun part of driving towards Grandma and Grandpa's around 1545 in the afternoon. The van marched right up the hills like they weren't even there. I also found out that it really likes downhill travel. There's one hill that I forgot about. It's fairly steep going up the one side. I kept to the speed limit climbing to the top of it. The next thing I knew the road disappeared out from under me. It's even steeper on the other side and before I knew it the van had climbed up to 60! :) Going in to the area where G&G used to live was pretty hard actually. It was really depressing. I did better at the last three funerals I attended than I did wandering around back there. If I'm honest I probably shouldn't have been driving in that condition. :/ I found the house. The last time I was up there was the Christmas before mom and dad split. That's been seven years. They have since renumbered everything. Had the lamp post at the end of the driveway not been there I probably wouldn't have been able to find the house as quickly as I did. The vacant lot that they used to own is now another house which further complicated matters. I took some photographs of the area. I saw that Uncle Andy's tree is still at the edge of the patio. Some of the bird feeders were still there as was the sundial. The dock was still there, but I couldn't tell if the box on the dock was still there. There was a pontoon boat in the way. The squirrel feeders weren't there anymore. The canoe stand with the wooden horse head was gone as was Grandpa's planter. The pictures have been posted to the gallery, though I didn't post any of the house. I had to be careful because I didn't have a visitor's pass so technically I was trespassing.
On my way back out I stopped to photograph a few things that I remembered as a child. They were the markers that told me that we were getting close to Grandma and Grandpa's or that we were getting farther away (depending on the circumstances). There was a swing set on the outskirts of the trails that I had been to a few times as a kit. I remember seeing a pasture with horses on the way in a few times. Most of the time I didn't see the horses because it was either fairly late at night or it was morning and they just weren't out at that time. They were out as I was leaving this time so I photographed them. There was also a sign for Wise Potato Chips. It was in the shape of an owl. After all of these years it was still posted next to the road. I wonder how much longer it has. I stopped by a lawn and garden shop before crossing SR903. There was a caboose there for a while. Grandpa took me there to see it shortly after it had arrived. The owners were going to turn it in to their new office. It wasn't there anymore. I pulled in to the parking lot and got out of the van. I walked up to the door to the store and saw the closed sign. I turned to go back to the van when the door opened. A woman stepped out and asked if she could help me. I saw that there were signs all around saying "Everything must go." I asked about the caboose. She said that it had been taken away by the previous owners about four years ago. :( There went another part of childhood.
As I headed back out to the interstate I pulled off to photograph a field. When I came around the corner of a hedgerow I saw a beaver. It saw me and started to run. I yelled "Stop" and it actually stopped. I took a few snapshots of it and prayed that it would stay around long enough for me to change to my telephoto lens so I could get a decent photo of it. It stuck around in the field for a bit. It would run towards the hedgerow and then stop and look around to make sure that it wasn't being followed. It went through the hedgerow and stopped at the edge of the road. I almost stepped out in the road to make sure that it didn't get hit. It actually looked both ways before starting across the road. When it got to the middle it paused and then ran the rest of the way across before it disappeared in to the woods. That helped brighten my spirits greatly.
I got back on the road to go see if I could find the boulder field. It was getting pretty late. I ended up at the Jack Frost Ski Resort. They said that I was actually really close to it when I was at G&Gs. It was too late for me to head back that way and get there before dark. I was resolved to the fact that I would have to do it some other time. I actually don't know if I'll go back up that way again. That's definitely not something I'm going to do any time soon.
Before I made the switch from I-80 to I-380 I stopped a few times to photograph the sun setting over the mountains. That was another thing that kinda hurt.
I decided that I would go to Joe's first before I went to the motel. It's not all that different from the way I normally work. I wasn't actually going to stop at his house; I just wanted to drive by so that I had an idea of where I was going to be going the next morning. It's not all that unlike what I did when I went to NYC. I scouted out the place where we were going to meet (at Castle Clinton) well in advance of actually meeting there. I found a security guard in the area. He helped me find the house. It seemed like it was the only one without a number. :)
I had more trouble finding the motel than I did finding Joe's. It was about a half hour away in Wurtsboro, NY. I got in around 2140 in the evening. All things considered I wasn't doing too badly. This place had free wireless Internet, although it was a little flakey. I logged in to the home network to make sure that the TiVo was recording the stuff that I programmed it to record before I left. I also went through and emailed one of the sunset photographs to Nicole. Ordinarily I would've gone over to Accounting and wished her a happy birthday in person. Considering I was on the road that made it kind of difficult. I figured that the picture would make up for it. Not long after I emailed the photo I shut things down and headed to bed. I had an early morning if I was going to be up and over to Joe's before the workshop started.
I'm going to stop here for now as it is getting late in the here and now. I'll continue this in the morning. Goodnight all. :)
Posted by Rob at December 30, 2007 02:32 AM