The Virginias

Over the last couple of years we’ve managed to catch up with our friend Collin more than our own families it seems. He’s staying in Virginia Beach while in the Navy and we couldn’t have timed it better to meet up with him.

Right away, he got to giving us a tour of base. And the breweries surrounding it. And the Wawa, a magical gas station that you can order custom junk food from screens without having to talk to anyone (which is quite handy after drinking beers).

After a day of running around he took us to eat oysters and hike around the oceanfront and the brackish water surrounding it.

We then headed over to a cool nature preserve with an experimental sustainable building on it and Kate and I saw our first composting toilet, which was much more normal than we expected. Collin was also training in an indoor skydive center which was fun to watch.

After some repairs on the van and another trip to Wawa, we headed onward to the Outer Banks. This was an amazing beach with one of the prettiest lighthouses we’ve seen yet.

To complete our loop of all of the states, we headed inland, where we were seeing the late fall colors drop off into a more winter, dreary mood.

Fortunately, par

We did a small hike in High Bridge state park, which coincidentally, had this:

Afterwards, we drove down the famous blue ridge parkway, including the section known as Tail of the Dragon, which was much less fun than it would have been on a motorcycle. Most of the National Park was closed at this point, but we were able to creep around some beautiful back roads and camp where, apparently, the locals go fishing a lot.

We finished up the trip at the famous Mcafee Knob section of the Appalachia trail.

We drove through Charleston, which was weirdly small for a state Capitol, and some very rural mining areas. West Virginia has a kind of hiding-hole vibe to it. New River Gorge is one of the only National Park campsites that doesn’t charge, and the hike around the tallest arch bridge in the western world was a good way to get the blood moving.