West Virginia and a Pal

Well yesterday after work, I took a little road trip. My friend from San Diego (who got married a month before me and moved to Boise) was out in Shepherdstown, West Virginia for the week for a conference. He is a U.S. Marshall, and he said that their “stations” are always in remote locations. Shepherdstown was more than remote. It makes Duvall or Gold Bar look ritzy. However, there were some cool parts of the town.

Anyway, the drive there took 2 hours. Under light traffic conditions it should take about an hour and a half. But luckily I caught some traffic because when I arrived at the Carrion Hotel where Mark was at, he didn’t pick up his phone when I called. He texted me shortly after I had left a voice message (which probably sounded panicked since I didn’t want to think that I drove all the way out there for nothing). He was still in his meeting. So he got out about 5 minutes after I got there. If there weren’t traffic, I would’ve had to wait for 35 minutes. So that was good.

Driving through Shepherdstown looks like a bunch of farm fields. It’s this little Podunk town. However, it had some of the coolest rolling hills that I’ve seen and driven across. I felt like I was in a rollercoaster. When I was a mile from the hotel, I could only imagine what kind of ghetto place they were staying at. But lo and behold, I turned a corner and out of nowhere is this one HUGE hotel. It isn’t super nice by a long shot, but the sheer size of it caught me off guard, especially with what a small, little town it’s in.

Anyway, Mark and I got together and found a Bavarian restaurant that we checked out. It was somewhat fancy, and the outside was like this little cottage house (rustic and old) which looked antique but nice (I dare not say “cute”). We had dinner and talked about anything and everything. Afterwards we went back to his hotel and hung out a bit and chatted more. Then we parted ways.

The trip back was an adventure. I was heading back the same way I headed in. I missed my turn though (GPS confused me), but that only cost me a minute. I got back on the main road shortly after cutting through a road which went through some corn fields. Then I got close to a traffic light which led to the highway. On the way to the traffic light, a car was flashing its lights at all the cars heading that way. I thought, “This can’t be good.” Sure enough, there was a huge back up on this one lane highway. People were pulling U-Turns and heading away. I was curious, so I waited a bit more. I couldn’t see what the hold up was, but I *did* see a cop at the end talking to each person (probably giving them directions) and telling them to turn around. So I pulled a U-turn.

GPS guided me a different direction, but I had to do it manually because it kept wanting me to go back to the same road. Heading the other way, there was a little slow down again and another bunch of cops were there. Nothing too bad though. I finally found the main freeway and got on that. The roundabout cost me 30 or so minutes. But at least I was heading home. Then I was heading south towards home (about an hour away) when the freeway lanes went from 4 to 2 due to construction. Ugh! So it was BACKED UP. I immediately exited and hoped GPS could help me. Sometimes GPS is stupid and wants me to keep going somewhere I don’t want to go. So again I manually directed myself, using GPS as a simple roadmap at this point. After driving south on an off-road parallel to the traffic jam for about 10 minutes, I figured it was good enough to get back on the freeway. Well, I missed my turn twice. So I kept trying to get on but couldn’t. Then when I finally found the turn to get to the freeway, I turned, and there was a train crossing. Ugh! I gave a sarcastic clap and sarcastic “Yes!” I waited for several minutes there. But finally I was on the freeway again, and the rest of the ride was smooth. Total time: 2 hrs. 30 minutes. I was supposed be home an hour earlier. Oh my life!!