Road Trip - Day 1

So I'm on a road trip. A friend of mine, who we'll call "Mike" (for the sake of anonymity) is moving to San Francisco and invited me to tag along for the drive across the country. I've never really been on a big road trip so I accepted. Today is the first day on the road.

Departure Point: Washington DC
Departure Time: 6:00am
Destination: Nashville, TN
Miles Today: 696.4

Well, we got off to kinda a bad start. Mike was about 50 minutes late picking me up and we got stuck in some DC morning rush hour traffic. Apparently there was an accident on the beltway.


Our route today took us out 66 and down 81 through the Shenendoah Valley, through Bristol VA, into Tenessee, then through Knoxville and on to Nashville for a delightful stay in Best Western - Music Row.


We made a few stops along the way, the first of which was Natural Bridge. Now truthfully, I have been looking forward to seeing all kinds of kitschy things along the way, but was not fully prepared for what I saw on the way to Natural Bridge. You see, the really silly stuff according to my research doesn't really start until maybe somewhere in Texas or maybe New Mexico so when I saw this, I got pretty excited



The Natural Bridge itself is a rock formation that at one time was one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World. While, there, if so inclined you can also visit the Wax Museum & Factory, The Natural Bridge Zoo, some sort of Dinosaur land attraction and play the lamest looking mini-golf course I've ever seen.


The next stop was in Tenesee. The Appalachian Caverns. There seem to be lots of caverns around. Endless Caverns, Forbidden Caverns, Luray Caverns, and on and on... I think once you've seen one, you've seen them all. This one claims to have some interesting bats, but the ones we saw were 1) tiny and 2) hibernating. Not so interesting.

At the moment, we're on I-40 heading west towards Knoxville and have just hit the 500 mile mark from DC.