17.08.2012 – 17.08.2012  26 °C

A nice lazy start this morning in Lexington, Va. If you’ve heard of Lexington you are probably thinking horses… I hate to break it to you but you’re thinking of Lexington, Ky, home to the Kentucky Derby.. well I was anyway!

Anyway, our drive today took us from the gorgeously southern Lexington east to the Blue Ridge and then south to Roanoke (and no we are not back on the Outer Banks in Nth Carolina.. its another Roanoke, Roanoke, Virginia). Our first stop wasn’t too far east of Lexington, the aptly named Foamhenge. Yep, I’ve now seen everything, I’ve seen Stonehenge and I’ve also had the joy of seeing Foamhenge, its styrafome contemporary. No joke, some wacko Virginian has built a scale replica of Stonehenge out of styrafome and has placed it on his farm. He has gone one step further and adorned the Henge with his version of Merlin… CLASSY! Umm, in fairness, who are the losers who stopped to take photos of this absurdity??

We continued up into the Blue Ridge Mountains for a day of stopping to check out each little walking trail/ scenic overlook. I am feeling pretty ordinary today, so I spent most of these “stops” by having a snooze in the back of the car.. So my commentary is going to be brief and explain that the Blue Ridge Mountains are very green, completely covered in big trees (mainly all deciduous types from what I can tell—not too many firs or pines).. very nice if you have great weather and feel good!

Our lunch stop today was inside the park at Peak Otter (one of the highest peaks in the East and one that is climbable—not that we tackled it today). Lunch was tasty but not pleasant due to those annoying black friends called insects! In fact, the insects were so bad today that we spent lunch “punker-wallering”.  Punker-wallering is a new term that I learnt today (and I’ve probably spelt it wrong!), it is the name for the little boys who used to fan the Raj’s of India to keep them cool. Well, I was today’s punker-waller, complete with plastic lid from our box. Not overly glamorous but gosh, when you can’t stop the bugs getting into your eyes, nose, ears and of course all over your food you have to do something!

The bugs are different to anything we have at home. They are these small black specky insects that fly around in really large swarms. They seem to call the Blue Ridge home because we haven’t come across their type before we entered the park. We did see them yesterday at our picnic stop but nowhere near as bad as today.

After the bugs had chased us back to the car (no lingering over lunch when you have to be on guard against yourself and your food), we got back in our car and continued our drive. This time we headed west out of the park and down to the large city of Roanoke. We actually stopped early this evening (about 3pm) and started doing the rounds looking for a place to stay for the evening. Our first stop was the Days Inn that was advertising a room for 1-4 people with brekky for 39.99!!! Ok at this price we had to have a look (by the way that isn’t the lowest price we’ve seen… the best I’ve ever come across is 29.99—how they make any money on that sort of a deal is well beyond me—and for the record, we’ve never bothered to check out a hotel that is this cheap… I mean, surely it’s cheaper for the ladies to rent a room for the whole night than by the hour at this sort of establishment!).

The price of 39.99 was indicative of the quality. For starters, the hotel is a large c-shaped building set over 3 stories with about 300 rooms- so a big hotel. It is an outdoor corridor hotel, meaning each room faces onto a cement railing corridor that is then open to view. These types of hotels don’t worry us that much (big and open), except when the brekky area caters for about 20 guests at one time and potentially over 600 guests staying in the hotel….. Hmm.. Anyway, we grabbed a key to check out the room. Our next impression was of dirty corridors and a dirty lift.. not promising… we get down to the room and the key doesn’t work so we can’t get into the room. We took a peak in the window and worked out the room was a standard American hotel room, two beds, bathroom, tele, fridge etc.. nothing spectacular. On arrival back at the front desk we also found out that a big gun convention was in town this weekend (it’s a Friday) and that the hotel was going to be full.. Yee-Haa.. Not surprisingly, we decided to keep looking!

We ended up paying more than double what the Days Inn was offering and we stayed at the Comfort Inn near the airport. Much nicer (internal corridors are always a good start) and definitely less crowded. We ended our evening walking just down the road to the local Chinese restaurant where we enjoyed a pretty good buffet for just 11.99 each. Great food, great location and best of all early night in!

Song of the Day– Billy Ray Cyrus, I want my mullet back! (and no this is not going to be found on my iPod but what a name of a song!!!!)