Location: Charlottesville, Virginia, USA

Last night was a great fun. After a quick cat nap, some surprisingly tasty Papa John’s pizza and a little football, Chris, Dan, Cassie and I geared up for a great evening of fun. Chris and Cassie had a formal to go to so after dropping them off, Dan and I walked through the NC State campus to grab a drink and wait for them. The campus was beautiful, as most college campuses are, but there were a few very unique things about this campus. The most notable was the Free Expression Tunnel (read my Sosauce.com review here). This tunnel is a pedestrian tunnel where university students are encouraged to express themselves. It mostly looks like a wall of junk, but the fact that a university has embraced an idea like this is really quite remarkable. Apparently also during rivalry week when NC State plays UNC, Tar Heel fans often come and express themselves all over the walls of the tunnel.

After wandering around campus for a bit, we found ourselves at a small bar where we had a quick drink and waited for Chris and Cassie to arrive. They came and picked us up and we all headed to downtown Raleigh to check out a great little piano bar called Rum Runners (read my Sosauce.com review here). The place was relatively small, but had a great vibe. Honestly, I’m not sure you can screw up a piano bar, but needless to say, they did not screw anything up. We spent some time singing and swaying and headed home to catch some good Z’s before a long day’s drive to Washington, D.C.

Only we didn’t exactly make it to D.C.

But I’ll back up. So we began our drive a little later than we had wanted to. But we definitely needed the sleep. We headed out of Raleigh just before noon with a quick stop to grab some gas and grub. North Carolina is beautiful, but we didn’t really stop to look around. Once we hit the state line in Richmond, we naturally had to stop and take our picture at the sign which happened to be on the property of the Welcome center. We decided to go in and grab some free propaganda (something I am now a BIG fan of!) and started talking to Hazel, the nice woman working the info desk. Within minutes she had convinced us to reroute our journey completely, taking a westbound highway after Richmond and driving across the top of the Blue Ridge Mountains along a path called the Skyline Drive. We weren’t a hard sell, and after calling my cousin Jennifer (who we are staying with in D.C.) we picked up and headed in our new direction.

Richmond was beautiful. I don’t remember it being this gorgeous. Once we crossed the James River, we got out of the car and took a quick hike to the Boulevard Bridge to see the river and the changing leaves a little more up close. After this we headed North through some really great old colonial neighborhoods, an area called the Fan which, aside from the iPod toting joggers, could fit right inside a period piece. We also stopped at a little lake called Boat Lake which has the most perfect still water reflections of the trees on the horizon. From here we headed northwest towards Charlottesville.

We arrived in Charlottesville just after dark and made a quick stop at Barnes and Noble to pick up a little book called “The Game” (if you haven’t heard of it, look it up – it’s by a guy called Neil Strauss and it’s pretty genius – I’ll let you know how it goes as we read through it) and checked into the Super 8 motel. Tonight we are relaxing. We grabbed some Panera and are watching Monday Night Football. Hopefully I can get some work done tonight and get enough sleep so that we can be nice and fresh for our long drive across the ridge tomorrow!

XOXO

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