Our Trip To Virginia: Part 1

by Mopkin – June 14, 2001

On May, 20, 2001, my brother Robert, sister Lina and friends George and Bianca and I set off on an adventure to Virginia. Why Virginia? I don't know. I guess we were looking for some good old-fashioned mountain fun. Good thing, 'cause that's what we got! This is part one of six, corresponding with the six rolls of film I shot during the trip.

Click on any picture to enlarge!

We rented an Oldsmobile Silhouette from Avis. This van was a piece of shit. It was the worst designed vehicle I have ever been in. Nothing in it made any sense. You had to push the knob one way in order to open a door the other way. There was no space under the chairs and it was generally lacking in storage space. Everything inside was designed to get in your way. What a pile of crap that thing was!

Any way, we left early in the morning and drove basically non-stop all day. We were planning in staying in Charlotte, South Carolina, but due to an unforeseen Nascar race, we had to drive 100 miles further north to a tiny town called Jonesville. We stayed in at a Taco Bell Express. Or was it a Holiday Inn Express?

We had tons of fun adventuring in the dirt behind the hotel. It was lots of fun!

We even found some famous rocks!
(Lina Blinking #1)

Here's Lina and George livin' it up in the hotel suite we had.
(Never mind the strange noises! Go back to sleep. It is just Bianca!)

Well, the next day we got up bright and early, partook of the hotel's continental breakfast (yummy milk!) and headed the rest of the way to another tiny town in Virginia called Luray. We stayed in a cabin in the woods on the side of a mountain. It was fun driving up the crazy mountain roads, especially at night. We shared the 3 bedroom, 1 bathroom with 1,000,000,000 bugs. Apparently it was "Fly Season." When we got to the cabin, the cleaning crew, i.e. the other 2 people in town, were still there cleaning up some eggs/beer/piss that had been splashed about by the prior tenants. So we decided to head off to the town's main attraction: Wal-mart. We bought some groceries for our stay there, making sure we bought enough for the whole week so we wouldn't have to make the drive up and down the mountain every time we needed something. We, of course, ended up going to Wal-mart every day.

It sure is dark around here at night!

Ooooooooo. FIRE
Fireplaces are fun!

Lina smiles and burns a leaf as a billion flies mock our citronella candles and fly for cover into the cabin.
(Lina Blinking #2)

Lina looking cute.
Again.

Yes, we were in the woods.
Yes, real trees.
Look! Shenandoah River in background.
(Well look hard.)

The next morning we left Virginia and took the first of two day trips to Washington D.C. We spent this first day visiting the National Smithsonian Museums. (This picture to the left is me in the National Natural History Museum.) We saw lots of other National things in DC. They were plentiful. The National Air and Space Museum. The National Mall, where we we had our bag lunches. The National Dental Floss. The National Toilet. It was lots of National fun. We also saw the National Capital Building, and Bianca's favorite part, the National Supreme Court (she's a lawyer). We also got to ride on the National Subway.