Road Trip - Smith Mountain Lake to Wilmington

Day 4 - Sunday 19th May - Smith Mountain Lake to Wilmington

Wet tent again, although not so bad inside and managed to put it away while not raining
Nicest shower so far, except for cicadas!

Drove around to check out Discovery Centre with beautiful views across lake, and beach which was a weird fake seaside!

Got on the road and made it to Chapel Hill in time for lunch. Much smaller than expected, but pretty, massive, University of North Carolina campus. Found tasty lunch (omelette, fruit and muffin) at Spanky's!

Back on the road to Wilmington, stopped once for iced tea, made it before 5. Had to dry out tent again though :-(

Headed downtown for a walk along the river, back through the quaint restaurants and shops, then did another loop to check out the historic buildings and houses. Looking at the photos makes it even more obvious that One Tree Hill was filmed there, didn't seem like it while I was there though!

Light taco dinner at Mixto, followed by salted caramel ice cream! Saw at least three weddings!

Now sat outside in a t-shirt at 10pm, pretty awesome, but thunderstorms forecast!

Road Trip - Sherando Lake to Smith Mountain Lake

Day 3 - Saturday 18th May - Sherando Lake to Smith Mountain Lake

Did not sleep great at all, again. Very wet night, woke up to a couple of puddles in the tent but thankfully not on us or any stuff. Weather still terrible in morning though, had to take tent down in rain and stuff in bin bag.

Back onto Blue Ridge Parkway, terrible fog at first but cleared as we went south. Nothing really open, very bizarre!

Didn't really stop until Roanoke, funny little town! Got tasty local food (tofu stir fry for me) at a market and wandered around a bit.

Got directions to a Walmart to try to buy stuff for tent drying, ended up at completely the wrong mall so wandered around for a while, totally hopeless, both so tired! Ended up using JC Penny WiFi to get directions to Walmart! After getting drive thru chais from Panera, went round Walmart pretty quickly.

Drove on to Smith Mountain Lake Park, our next campsite. Another beautiful site. Gravel pitches though, very strange! Got tent up and dried out, then went for a little walk before enjoying another picnic tea. Gonna try for an early night soon!

Road Trip - Big Meadows to Sherando Lake

Day 2 - Friday 17th May - Big Meadows to Sherando Lake

Didn't sleep great. Started out by paying $1 for a cold shower, and nearly lost a sock!

Left around 9, drove to mile 79 and hiked up Loft Mountain, incredible view point!

Down by 11.30, had some elevenses (tea and a Clif bar!) bought some souvenirs and continued to the end of Skyline Drive :-(

Drove to Charlottesville, such a beautiful town! Pedestrianised main street, lovely independent stores and so many food outlets! 

Had awesome burgers (chicken or vegan and avocado) at Citizen Burger. 

Did a loop to see the pretty University of Virginia campus, then went to Great Harvest (of KathEats fame, I have been reading this blog religiously for over two years and was very excited)! Picked up a loaf of pesto parmesan swirl and had a nice chat with the girl serving.

Drove back to the start of the Blue Ridge Parkway and a long way off to Sherando Lake Park to our campsite. There was a lady pitching her tent on our site, I got flustered and backed the car into a tree! Yikes! Pretty stressful, but hopefully will be covered by insurance. Fingers crossed!

Got our tent up, went to check out the lake, came back, got swimming stuff, went back to the lake, decided not to swim, walked around lake instead!

Changed into PJs and had a picnic of our bread and other snacks at our picnic table. Until it started to chuck down with rain! Great to have a car to run to! Hung out there until eased off, then found puddle in tent! Just from a label wicking it in, easily fixed by cutting it off! 

Road Trip - Baltimore to Big Meadows

So it's back to the journal for the story of the road trip, enjoy!

Day 1 - Thursday 16th May - Baltimore to Big Meadows

Up bright and early, dragged everything, including a tray of water, to the Sheraton to pick up our car. Strong arms required!

Lovely lady at Avis, from Virginia Beach, gave us a "grey"car (it's white), persuaded me to buy insurance, and didn't have a full tank of gas like I requested. Oh and upgraded to a bigger car because she didn't have any smaller ones :S

All OK though, we loved our white Chevy Cruze! Driving is fun. Getting past DC was busy though.

Stopped at rest stop in VA, saw some of the cicadas!!! Gross and amazing!

Stopped at weird strip mall, no car adapter for music at Target so walked even further across massive parking lot, very hot, and found one in Five Below, cheapy! Got iced beverages at Starbucks. Got back to car to find it had a headphone jack after all so we didn't even need to go find the adapter! Got some tunes on!

Made it to Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park! So beautiful! Stopped at lots of outlooks, a rest stop where we found some walking pamphlets at mile 4, found food at mile 24.

Made it to Big Meadows campsite around 4, pitched tent in 8 minutes flat, then went out to hike to Rose River Falls. Very hot and sweaty! Saw a chipmunk :D And thankfully no bears, which is obviously down to all the talking and clapping...

Back to Big Meadows Lodge for dinner, hilarious experience! Big wooden dining room, served by a rather scary waiter who may or may not have taken a bite out of our Oreo cheesecake! Had to send pot roast + Tamzy's mushroom polenta thingy back for being too cold.

Chilled out in the Great Room for a while, amazing sunset!

Checked out entertainment down in the Tap Room, interesting renditions of Pink Floyd and David Bowie, all to the same tune!

Washington DC Cycle Chic Style!

Now I promise that after this I will get to the road trip, but first I have to tell you about the wonderful day we spent in Washington DC. Traditionally a day spent showing someone around the capital of the US involves a LOT of walking, but we decided to rent bikes which turned out to be the best idea ever! It was so much fun and we were able to see so much more with the one day available to us. Obviously I've already seen all of the monuments before, and by cycling Tamz and I managed to see most of them by lunchtime.

This allowed us time to cycle along the Potomac to Georgetown which had been recommended to me as a cool place to wander around, with a canal and quaint houses. We found a lovely French patisserie in which to have baguettes for lunch, and a sneaky pastry saved for later. And found a cool spice and tea store where I could have spent all day!

After cycling back down to the Mall we had our requisite viewing of the White House before going in search of the old Post Office tower which is currently the highest viewing point in the city while the Washington Monument is undergoing repairs from an earthquake about 18 months ago.

Then we just had time to have a look at the original Star-Spangled Banner in the American History Museum, very appropriate given our trip to Fort McHenry the previous day, which is the first place this flag was flown.

Awesome day! :D

Tamzy in Baltimore

Once we came home from New York, Tamzy spent about a week staying with us here in Baltimore while I got in a few days at work before we headed out on our big trip (which I'm sure y'all are gasping to hear about, all in good time :) ). I had fun partially showing her around and partially sending her off to visit the nicer parts of town. On my first day back at work I showed Tamz around the lab, showed her some melanoma cells down the microscope, then took her to Lexington Market, partly for the experience, but mainly for Faidley's lump crab cake, the best crab cake I have tasted!

On the Friday N finnnalllyy came home from all of his trips (Spain on this particular occasion), so we took the opportunity to visit Arundel Mills, a mall near the airport which has lots of outlet stores and a camping shop, to stock up on stuff for our trip "on the way" to pick up N. The camping shop turned out to be pretty rubbish, but we did spend an awful lot of money on some amazing bargains in the Merrell outlet, getting us both hiking shoes and me a lightweight waterproof. And having now used both I can testify that they were awesome purchases. I also may or may not have made an impulse buy in the Levi's outlet, but who can resist jackets this pretty, with so much money off?! (I went for the purple, not both, although I did also love the green and was very tempted!)

The Saturday started with a lazy morning, during which Tamz told us a story about how in Liverpool she cycles past a car on the way home from work every day with a bumper sticker saying "Eat Bertha's Mussels", and had wondered for ages what on earth it meant. Then the previous day she'd gone to Fells Point and seen a restaurant with "Eat Bertha's Mussels" on the side, so now she knows! Apparently they give the bumper stickers out to everyone who eats there, so we went there for lunch, and all left with our very own! This was followed by a trip to the roller derby. So much fun, as always :) Go Charm City Roller Girls!

The only picture I took at the roller derby.
Given what I work on it seemed like a very inappropriate name to me!

On the Sunday Tamzy and I decided to take the water taxi to Fort McHenry. This was new to me too, and totally worth it, if a little breezy! And it was fun for Tamz to learn all the history about how the Americans beat the pesky British on this site, inspiring Francis Scott Key to pen the lyrics to what is now the American National Anthem.

We also took her to some of our favourite restaurants, including City Cafe, and Joss' Cafe for her first sushi, both in Mount Vernon, and of course we had to have take out from Fusion Wok, our favourite establishment  in the food court downstairs, where the lady now even knows my order!

New York City - Day 5

Day 5 - Tuesday 7th May

Walked to Grand Central, found breakfast and caught subway down to Battery Park. Ate parfaits overlooking the Statue of Liberty!

Caught the Staten Island ferry to get a good view of the statue and the skyline, turned around and got right back on again to go back to Manhattan!

Caught subway to Columbus Circle, bought lunch at Whole Foods, picked up some fro yo with extra berries and went to find Strawberry Fields, the John Lennon memorial in Central Park which we'd missed on Saturday.

Long hot walk back to hostel to collect bags, ended up at bus stop a little early so ate our lunch outside Madison Square Garden.

Caught bus home to Baltimore, very tired, was very excited to get there and sleep!

So that's where the story of my very first trip to New York City ends, stay tuned for more tales of fun sisterly times in Baltimore, Washington DC and on our road trip baby woo!