Day 2: Take me home, country roads

DAY 2: Elkins, West Virginia
Miles traveled so far: 152
States visited so far: 3 (just added: West Virginia, Virginia)

I finally made it to a Panera with wifi, so here’s my update on yesterday and this morning. Last night I slept at a Walmart in Buckhannon, West Virginia. I wanted to stay at the one in Elkins because I knew that one allowed overnight parking, but my GPS told me there wasn’t a Walmart there. Then, this morning I drove right past it. My GPS lied to me! (I’m quickly discovering that I really need a cell phone that can access the Internet…)

It was a little hard to fall sleep because I wasn’t certain if the Buckhannon Walmart allowed overnight parking, so everytime I heard a truck driving around the lot I imagined it was security coming to bust me. But I got over it and got 8 hours of sleep. It was super cold in the van when I woke up, but I’m ok with that because most of my nights on this trip will be brutally hot, so I’ll take the cold while I can get it. I had two blankets and a hoodie so I was fine.

When I turned on my laptop this morning I got the grey screen of doom and I thought it was dead, which would be my worst nightmare. But a couple more tries got it working. Apparently the laptop was just cold from last night. I’ll have to be sure to insulate it better.

This morning I went to the Monongahela National Forest near Elkins and wandered around. I did some hiking and came upon the Cheat Summit Fort location, which was a fort used by the North during the Civil War. There wasn’t much to see, just some mounds in the ground where the edges of the fort used to be, and a former gravesite.

At the very top of the mountain I came across one tiny little slab of snow. This excited me greatly because I was really hoping to see snow at some point on the trip, but I didn’t think it was likely because it’s April and I’m heading south.

After that I headed towards Charlottesville, driving through a lot of farm country and small towns with roads with names like Frog Pond Lane and Apple Orchard Street. This time my GPS did me a favor and took me through the George Washington National Forest in Virginia, which also contained a Civil War fort, this one used by the Confederate Army. They’ve preserved a trench that the soldiers knelt in while trying to fire at enemy soldiers. The view from up there is amazing.

I’m in Charlottesville now. I’ll write about that tomorrow. By the way, don’t expect all of my blog posts to be this long!