On the Road Again :)

Yesterday morning, Andrew and I left for our 2.5-day road trip to Crestwood, Kentucky. I can't say we've done anything too impressive yet, but it's definitely been an eventful (and roundabout, and unpredictable) journey.

We departed Arlington mid-morning, headed to a campsite run by the park service about 10 miles outside of Neola, West Virginia. After this town, the campground, the nearby lake, and all other identifying terms we had for this place were deemed nonexistent by the GPS, we finally put in some other random city on the VA/WV border, just so we'd get to the general area without any problems.

It took about 4 1/2 hours to get where we thought we wanted to be...and after a little confusion we finally figured out how to get to Neola with the help of another amazing modern tool, Andrew's iPhone (but honestly, I'm glad we had a paper map for this adventure too...it's been an invaluable guide). We followed a relatively tiny state route, tailgating a school bus the entire time and people watching all the way. We were pretty relieved when we finally started seeing signs for our campsite, and followed a seemingly endless windy road to get there. We thought we had passed it a few times and thought about turning back...and BAM! "Welcome to Sherwood Lake! BEGIN VIEWING WILDLIFE." I was actually cheering. We turned the bend...and immediately came to this:

So that was Unbelievable Obstacle #1 of the day...no one seemed to be worried about it and there was obviously nothing we could do (and Andrew confessed that he had little to no interest in camping anyway). So we decided to keep driving. I think this was the first time in my whole life that I thought about sleep that night and didn't know which city (or even state) I'd have a bed in. After running off an ending road into a dirt trail at 45 mph (Unbelievable Obstacle #2--there were no signs, mind you), and becoming stranded when we found dead end after dead end in our least favorite city in the country, Beckley, WV, we finally stopped in Charleston to eat dinner and find a hotel for the night. Neither Andrew nor I had ever just walked into a hotel (in the US) and asked for a room, but no one seemed to think too much of it and we found a room with no trouble at all. Although we were kept up pretty late by an endless battle between a hotel party and security staff right across the hall. West Virginia is "wild and wonderful" even on Wednesday nights!

So we're about to begin Day 2, Destination: Lexington! At this point, we're ready to get out of this state. On that note: