Road Trip! With pictures!

Hi! I had too much caffeine this morning! I am hyper!

The ADD is on overdrive because of the caffeine, which makes little sense. Stimulants are used to treat ADD symptoms. This caffeine is making me hyper-spastic.

Light and I are in Indiana, Pennsylvania. She will start grad school next month at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP). We're here to secure housing and some kind of part-time employment for her.

We got to Indiana yesterday (Saturday) late afternoon. It's a quaint little place, seems like a college town, but I'm not sure yet. It isn't big; smaller than Greenwood SC where we live. We've been to Wal-Mart twice already (sigh). We're staying in a rustic, quaint little place on the east side of town. "Rustic" and "quaint" means cheap and old. I kinda' like it. Do you remember the trip I took last summer to Massachusetts with C? He would HATE this little motel. The place reminds me of my grandmother. It smells old and musty, but in a good, nostalgic way. It's plain, but clean and functional. There's an air conditioner, a very noisy window unit that cools slowly but well. We turned it off this morning to get some peace and quiet. It makes good white noise for sleeping. I will have to take some pictures of the place to show you. I'm particularly fond of the shower stall and the tile pattern on the bathroom floor.

So I've been taking road trip pictures to share with you. Let me tell you about the no-tell motel where we stayed Friday night. It's a Knights Inn in Ghent, WV. OMG, West Virginia! It reminded me forcefully of South Carolina, but with cooler temps and prettier scenery. I was amused. We were on I-77. We saw quite a few "adult entertainment and novelty" establishments, more so than I've seen in SC. So, this Knights Inn: a large gravel parking area with plenty of room for truck parking; an "adult books and video" store in front of the place.

Here's a pic of the Lion's Den

Panning left, the hotel

You may need to embiggen this to tell, but landscaping is not high on the priority list.

View of the Lion's Den from our room

View of the large gravel parking lot with huge pot holes; Lion's Den entrance on the left

Moving down the road a bit, this is the ladies room in the visitor's center at the New River Gorge park. IIRC, it's a national park. I'll show you more of that shortly. The sign taped to the wall says "Hand Washing ONLY." Why? What other kind of washing are they precluding?

Does this mean I can hand wash my delicates in these sinks?

Moving on from the bathrooms, here's a picture from the little museum area in the visitor's center. The area along the New River was used in the mining industry back in the early 20th century. This is an example of a homemade mandolin. Cool, huh? Makes me want to get my scroll saw out try it myself.
There is an overlook of the New River Gorge and the bridge that crosses it. This visitor's center shows the history of the mining industry as well as the process of building the bridge. The bridge is pretty impressive!

A pretty flowering bush (mountain laurel, maybe? Rhododendron?) on the way to the overlook

The bridge, looking south.

We of course were driving north, so we crossed the bridge then came upon the park. I couldn't resist. Light humored me, we stopped. She was in a hurry to get to Indiana. I am all about enjoying the trip. She's a very patient daughter.

The bridge is very high. I'm not fond of being on bridges, but the engineering aspect of bridge design and construction fascinates me. This bridge, as you can see from the diagram below, is as high as the Washington Monument plus two Statues of Liberty. Cool, huh?

Looking east into the New River Gorge

The place is beautiful. Superman has been to the Pacific Northwest and seen the Columbia River Gorge, which I understand is logarithmically more impressive than this, but this is what I saw, photographed, and am telling you about. Interesting factoid: The New River is actually very old, and flows north. In the northern hemisphere most rivers flow south. The St Johns River in eastern Florida flows north. It is one of the largest north-flowing rivers in this hemisphere, and is at sea level. The New River in West Virginia runs through the mountains, so I'm pretty sure the northward flow is all about gravity and downhill. Not as impressive as the St Johns*, imho. Here's what Wikipedia says about the New River.

I've been sitting here in this Starbucks for a few hours now. It's time to move along. Haven't had internet access in two or three days, so I'm catching up a little bit. Haven't had a chance to look at other blogs in almost a week. HOPEFULLY I'll do some of that later this week.

*OK, according to Wikipedia, the St Johns flow is about gravity, too, but it's a minor drop in elevation.