New Orleans’s loss was my gain last weekend,
as after the meatball’s plans to go to Mardi Gras in the Big Easy fell through,
she decided to come slum it with me in the Mid-Atlantic. Naturally since it was
Valentine’s Day on Saturday, we had many romantic things planned for the
weekend – starting with eating, progressing to more eating, and finishing with
even more eating. We did take a break long enough to fulfill our outdoor
activities quota, though!
Gina arrived in Baltimore Thursday night after
a long drive from Columbia; she’s now halfway to evening up our
dedicationometer after my two treks to South Carolina by car this year. We went
grocery shopping, as we always do on our visits, at Target and made dinner in
the house. Rigatoni with vodka sauce and parmesan with some chicken strips and bacon mixed in, garlic bread, and pita chips
with roasted red pepper and feta cheese dip.
She then, in her cute way, fell asleep on the
couch while we watched Michigan suffer yet another heartbreaking loss in
overtime at Illinois, managing to pry defeat from the jaws of victory by
collapsing at the end of regulation against the Fighting Illini. After seeing Michigan
win both of the first two games I went to in person, the Wolverines are now 0-3
in contests I’ve either attended or watched with Gina. Clearly an ominous sign
for our relationship.
We met at my office for lunch on Friday,
enjoying the remainder of our crackers and dip from the night before and
winning admiring looks and stares from a couple co-workers, who bombarded me
with questions and comments after we finished and I made my way back up to my
desk. “Was that THE Gina?” “She’s SO cute Michael.” “Would it have been creepy
if we came and said hi?” Yes, I know, and maybe, if you would’ve attacked her
the same way you did to me five seconds ago.
We went out for dinner that evening, at the
delicious Annabel Lee Tavern close
to my house. Hint: if it’s Friday night and you didn’t make a reservation,
there’s no chance you’re getting in, as we had found out a couple times
previously. We had, though, also eaten there once
before, and it was just as satisfying this time around. We started off with
a mountainous plate of BBQ chicken and applewood smoked bacon nachos, so big
that it wound up being boxed and finished by me for lunch earlier this week,
before moving onto our respective main courses: roasted duck with poached eggs
and Cajun hollandaise sauce over grits for Gina, and a nice, solid crab cake
with mashed potatoes and seasoned asparagus for me. We did what damage we
could, and I was more than happy to finish those leftovers this week as well.
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| Mouth is watering just posting this. |
After being truly, deeply touched by Gina’s
Valentine’s Day gift on Friday night, which included the most thoughtful and
loving objects to set the five senses alight, we drove our separate cars back
down to Fredericksburg Saturday morning for a quick pit stop at my house before
setting out together once again. We made our way westward (though not quite as
far west as we will in July. The panicking and hyperventilating that will
result from desperate attempts to take pictures, mental notes, and blog after
that trip makes my body seize up even now), heading for our second national
park in as many weeks.
We’d visited Congaree
National Park in South Carolina recently, and it had inspired a quest.
There are 59 protected areas in[1]
the United States run by the National Park Service and the Department of the
Interior that have been established as national parks for their natural beauty, unique geological features, unusual ecosystems, and recreational opportunities, and our new goal is to visit all of them. We’ve already been to a
good handful of them on our own, though I know I don’t really remember trips
when I was very young to the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Sequoia National Park
in California, and the Badlands of South Dakota, amongst others, so I’d like to
start from scratch and do them all.
There are not many national parks that are
conveniently located for East Coasters like us; the vast majority of them are in
or west of the Rocky Mountains, so we needed to seize an opportunity that had
presented itself. Shenandoah National Park is just a couple hours from my house
in Fredericksburg, and though it was far too cold on this February Saturday to
do any hiking, Skyline Drive runs for 105 miles down the spine of the park in
the Blue Ridge Mountains and was calling our names, begging to be driven on at
nothing exceeding 35 miles per hour.
It was an adventure in itself just to get out
there. We were bogged down by traffic in Culpeper, just thirty miles from
Fredericksburg but a world apart. Who knew Culpeper was so lively? Then, after
needing lunch and gas but being far too stubborn and childish to stop in
Culpeper, I decided to drive onwards, figuring we could stop in Sperryville
because it looked fairly decent-sized on the map. Let me tell you, it is not.
Certainly it is bigger than Woodville, which we
drove in and out of faster than Usain Bolt runs the 100 meters. If a town has one line
written about it on Wikipedia, that’s all you need to know about it. Sperryville is
unique. There was literally not a single gas station, which begs the question
where its 342 residents fuel up their cars. Yet, every other edifice on its
streets was an art gallery or antique shop, begging another question, who
exactly buys any of those things? There was a mixture of gravel and paved
roads, no surprise for a small town, until you consider that there were no
automobiles in sight. Gina spotted a peasant simply trudging through the middle
of an empty field. I spotted a vending machine just on the side of the road
that had to predate the 1960s. It was the oddest little town, one without
petrol, so frustratingly I had to admit I was wrong and we drove on.
We then stopped in Luray, where I knew there
would be gas and food because I had actually been there before, having gone on
several school field trips as a youngster to the tourist trap that is Luray
Caverns. Stalactites and stalagmites, anyone? We pulled into a gas station
there, where having been so flustered by our experience in Sperryville, I drove
up to what was, unbeknownst to me, a pump that only emitted diesel. If it wasn’t
for the kind, rednecky soul in a small pickup truck at the pump next to ours, I
would’ve injected my little Toyota Camry with a fuel that would’ve ruined its
system and set me back hundreds and hundreds of dollars. Thank you, sir.
Finally, after making it to Shenandoah, we
set out on the 35-mile stretch of Skyline Drive that was most convenient for us
to get back to Fredericksburg. We drove from Thornton Gap to Swift Run, pulling
off at lookout points every couple of miles to soak in the cold mountain air,
enjoy the views from 3500 feet up, and get the best pictures for Instagram. Skyline
Drive, and the larger Blue Ridge Parkway that runs through North Carolina and
Virginia, is very well known and highly-traveled during the fall, when the
leaves change and the foliage is colored brilliantly. In February, though, it
was nearly empty, and that was perfect for us. Snow covered some areas on the
ground and icicles had formed over the carved parts of the mountain that had been
either tunneled through or exposed to construct the road running through it. The
sight of the valleys below was something to behold.
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| View from above |
I had wanted to visit Shenandoah since
reading A Walk in the Woods, Bill
Bryson’s memoirs of hiking the Appalachian Trail with his childhood friend from
Iowa. I’ve been on a Bryson kick since last fall, devouring his travel writing
from his exploits in Europe and the United States and it pleased me to no end
to come across some of the same places he wrote about during his time in
Shenandoah.
We spent a couple hours in the park, which we
had been delighted to enter for free since it was Presidents’ Day weekend and
the National Park Service wasn’t charging admission to enter its federal lands.
On the way home, Gina was her most patient self, indulging me on a stop at
Madison County High School, the opponent in my first ever varsity soccer game
and somewhere I hadn’t been in over a decade. It didn’t look exactly as I had
remembered it, and we drove around both the high school’s football stadium and
an open space outside of the local middle school trying to jog some memories. In
conclusion, after many minutes later and what surely was constant angry
hair-pulling from Gina, I still can’t be exactly sure where we played but I was
fairly confident it was actually at the middle school.
That night, since it actually was Valentine’s
Day and I felt I should at least try to be romantic, we went to dinner at Brock's, a restaurant on the banks of
the Rappahannock River in downtown Fredericksburg. There we dined in style, next
to a table of 8 or 10 high school girls all dolled up, with fancy dresses and
full makeup and heels, with literally nowhere to go unless their daddies came
to pick them up and drive them somewhere else. Gina enjoyed a house salad and a
glass of red wine to start, with a fish special for dinner that unfortunately I
cannot remember the name of because our waitress may very well have been high
when she recited its description and laughed in that ever-so-charming fake way
as she did so, and I had chicken tortilla soup and a mediocre seafood carbonara
pasta dish. I was a bit disappointed, in all honesty, though we did salvage the
night by taking an excellent selfie to commemorate the occasion and stopping at
Wegmans on the way home for chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream.
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| Aw, look at us. |
Sunday morning, we laid on the couch and
watched the Nat Geo channel on TV for several hours. Never in my life had I
learned so much about cats of prey. Fascinating creatures, honestly. Of course
we had to eat, so we had brunch at IHOP, alongside what apparently was the rest
of Fredericksburg’s population. I couldn’t believe how packed it was. There was
a 20-minute wait to just to get a table. At IHOP!! And like idiots, we couldn’t
even use the coupon I brought because it explicitly said valid Monday-Friday
only on it, a slight oversight on the part of the two people who read over the
coupon multiple times but only read the small print about getting a free meal
under $9 if you bought another meal and two drinks. Sigh.
So that was our Valentine’s weekend. Not too
shabby, if I do say so myself, but I’m looking forward to even more fun
adventures next weekend when we go back to our New Jersey roots. More then.
[1]
Well, this includes parks in American Samoa, a US territory in the middle of
the South Pacific; and the US Virgin Islands, a group of islands in the
Caribbean not far from Puerto Rico.
