A Day of Driving and an Escaped Convict

Trip Start May 14, 2010

Trip End May 22, 2010

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Where I stayed

Knights Inn Staunton/Verona

(Verona hotels)

Flag of United States Verona, Virginia
Saturday, May 15, 2010

A busy day that got off to a good start. We both decided that staying in Maysville was definitely the way to go. After a leisurely breakfast at the hotel we headed out (after another brief Walmart stop for forgotten things) towards WV. Pretty uneventful drive, and it was a beautiful day. It's always amazing how undisturbed most of the landscape appears from the interstates of WV. A quick lunch at Taco Bell/Pizza Hut in Charleston, where we saw many...er...interesting characters. Stopped for awhile at the Tamarack arts and crafts center. Saw lots of interesting items that would have been beautiful in our home, but the prices were a bit out of our reach. Continued on to VA and our stop in Verona for the night. It's a very small town north of Staunton and just south of Shenandoah (our destination for the next couple of days).

After resting a bit in the room we headed back to Staunton for dinner at the Rowe's Family Restaurant, a staple in the region since the late 1940s. It serves good country cooking, and we had a very enjoyable meal (dessert was particularly tasty). After dinner we drove through Staunton, a town of many steep hills. The majority of the town was spared during the Civil War, so many of the early 19th century homes are still standing.We then headed back to the room to plan the following day's activities.

Oh, what's the escaped convict all about? Well, we inadvertently got in the middle of something rather bizarre before dinner. As we were waiting at a red light after getting off the interstate a lady carrying a walkie talkie quickly crossed in front of us and ran across the street. She appeared to be following another girl in her late teens wearing a blue jumpsuit as she walked under the overpass. As we turned left to head to the restaurant the girl stopped, then stepped directly out in front of our car. Luckily, we weren't going very fast so we easily stopped in time (although fast enough that the brakes locked a bit). The girl stood there for a moment, with walkie-talkie woman standing off to the side. The girl then stepped back onto the curve and kept quickly walking, with the other in tow. As we turned onto the frontage to park for dinner, we noticed other women showing up (all with walkie talkies), and the jumpsuit girl stopped against a wire fence in front of us. As the other women got too close, she jumped through the fence (ouch) and ran quickly in front of our car and across the street (with the others following behind). The last we saw before going into the restaurant was the girl running into a convenience store. It all seemed a little odd, but it made sense after dinner when we noticed the "Commonwealth Center for Children & Adolescents" across the interstate...a prison!

A very interesting day, indeed!