Almost Home

Yesterday we hit our final Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives spot for this trip. Dots Back Inn in Richmond is a locals place, known for their Mediterranean Pie appetizer and Black Bean Corn Cakes. We couldn't resist a bit of breakfast food, so we also ordered the Chunky Monkey Pancake special, a grilled banana wrapped in a chocolate chip and walnut pancake. We couldn't finish our food! The restaurant was small and quaint, but really smoky.


We stayed at the apartment in DC last night, then took the RV to Manassas this morning. It felt a bit sad surrendering our little home away from home. We traveled over 1800 miles and spent nine days together on the road!


Tonight, M.E. will be headed back to Virginia Beach, and it's back to work for both of us tomorrow. We had a great time. Until our next trip, you're going to have to get your updates from us directly! ;-)

I Feel the Earth Move Under My Feet

We are in Petersburg this morning. We left Virginia Beach Saturday morning, headed for Al's Famous Hot Dogs. M.E. had the "Virginia Beach" (naturally!) and Tino had the "Boston." (The house was too quiet without Gracie.)




We took it fairly easy yesterday, driving about two hours through central Virginia. We took 460 West, out through Wakefield so we could hit up the Virginia Diner. Guy Fieri had featured it on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. On the weekends, they have a buffet... fried chicken, bbq, roast beef, collards, carrot souffle.... WOW. Let's just politely say we may have over-indulged a bit! The food was really wonderful.

We stopped at South Forty campground in Petersburg. It is so quiet here! (With the exception of the cranking 70s music in the bathhouse!) The grounds are peaceful and the facilities are very clean. We took advantage of the quiet to catch up on our sleep, and the rain that plunked against the RV roof made sleeping quite easy. This morning we availed ourselves of the facilities (we dumped the sewer all by ourselves!) and are now ready to move out.

We'll head into DC today, stopping at Dot's Back Inn in Richmond.

Friday -- OBX and a brief stop home in VB

We started our day in Hatteras. After a stop for coffee at the Dancing Turtle, we headed north along Route 12. We had the best lunch at a little restaurant called Top Dog Cafe in Waves, NC. We shared a bacon and blue cheese burger and a cajun mahi sandwich... a 9.8!
What appears to be another beachside restaurant turned out to be our best meal on the Outer Banks of NC. Along with the top notch food, the attention given by the lone wait staff, Catfish to all of our tables was extraordinary. The burger, even though cooked through, was moist and flavorful. The mahi-mahi was butter soft with a generous tomato slice and a side of french fries that came right out of the fryer. This is what beach food should be. The last touch was a reserved space for local law enforcement and EMS personal to have their meals. If you do get over to this part of the Outer Banks, we do highly recommend this place.

We enjoyed the beach air, passed the house from the movie Nights in Rodanthe, and stopped to walk on the beach near Kitty Hawk.

Tonight we're at home in Virginia Beach and will be leaving for Richmond tomorrow for the last leg of our trip.

OBX

After leaving Asheville, we couldn't find a campground. We had sworn we weren't going to boondock on the trip, but we ended up boondocking in a WalMart parking lot!

We took the ferry into Ocracoke and then the ferry into Hatteras.


Dinner at MackDaddy's was.... adequate. We'd recommend trying elsewhere.


Our hotel has such a beautiful view!

Mmmmmore Asheville

Wednesday we went to Magnolia's for lunch. Tino loves New Orleans food, and this place never disappoints. (Tino had gumbo, and M.E. had a shrimp po-boy.) The same lawyers and Ashevillians were there! It was fun for M.E. because the Buncombe County Women's Attorneys luncheon was coincidentally being held.... I got to see Smitty, Leah, Eileen and Kate. Maria joined us for dessert with her friend Joe.

After lunch we went to see the new Pisgah Legal Services' office. QUITE a change from the Gudger House on Montford where M.E. worked for eight years.

We toured downtown a bit, looking at art at the Kress Emporium and having coffee at Green Sage. (Asheville folks -- it used to be Bean Streets.) We met friends Jim, Sharon, David and Virginia for dinner at Tupelo Honey... What a great meal and such challenging conversations!









It was really great to see you guys!

We had fried green tomatoes for an appetizer. Sharon had an omelet, Jim had tuna, David had the flank steak, Virginia and I had the nutty chicken, and Tino had shrimp and grits.









Then off, on the road to the Outer Banks. Tonight, we're in a hotel (showers! bed!) in the Outer Banks. We're a bit sleepy, so, we'll post more tomorrow.

Ahhh.... Land of Sky (Asheville)

We're here in Asheville! We've missed these beautiful mountains and the great friends who live here. We had lunch with Mike Zboyovski at Marco's Pizzeria. It was fun to catch up, and Mike was nice enough to bless Tino's new wedding ring. (He kinda flushed the first one.)



After lunch we went to the Shoji Retreat Center. The drive up through the mountains is NOT for the faint of heart! The hot tub soak, views, dry skin brushing, and massages were definitely worth it. We've had serviceable showers during the trip, but we had huge spa showers... mmmmm!




We found Ultimate Ice Cream on the way back to the campground. We tried the Ginger and Belgian Dark Chocolate (M.E.) and Cinnamon-Hazelnut and Maple-Bacon (Tino) ice creams.

She blinded me with science!

ME has been doing all of the blogging up till now, and I figured that it was my turn. When I think of art and culture, I think of New York, DC, Paris, and London, not Roanoke, VA. Roanoke was a place on I-81 that we stopped to get gas on the way down to New Orleans in my college days.

Rewind a couple of weeks, I was reading one of the postings from one of the many mailing lists that I am on. The posting said that an artist list member had an art exhibition in Roanoke and invited us all down to visit. We hit the Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke on Sunday. It stands as one of the few pieces of modern architecture in a sea of southern traditional buildings. As we walked in, we were greeted with a vast cavern reminiscent of an Apple store.


We came to see Alberto Gaitan's Remembrancer, but saw so much more. Mr Gaitan's explanation of the installation had five points of what the piece meant to him. The point that resonated with me was the point of how much information we leave behind to "trusted sources" and that fact was made especially pronounced with the setting of the dark room.


With the Remembrancer art installation, we also viewed both classical paintings and 20th century art. The science geek in me loved the Campbell's soup can that could be viewed through a glass orb about 3ft away from the wall. Truely cool. Walking away from the Taubman, a new facet of Roanoke has emerged for me.