This Side of Weird

You could say that I have a...fascination?...for the unusual, weird, and unexplainable. This isn't anything new. I've always been fascinated by ghost stories. I can remember visiting the library in my hometown in Northern California, located in the basement of a city building, and checking out books full of ghost stories. In fact, though I haven't been to that library in probably about 20 years...I can still picture exactly where those ghost stories were located in the library stacks.

But I digress...

Back to my fascination with the unexplained...I grew up reading books on ghosts, books on how to see ghosts, books on what ghosts were...anything I could get my hands on. I really can't pinpoint why it's such a fascination for me...except that it is.

One more digression...I remember one time, I was probably 14 or so, I had checked out a book that talked about what you could do to see a ghost. It was in the afternoon and I was in my bedroom, sitting on my bed with the door closed, reading this book. I remember that the book said that sometimes, when you are concentrating on one thing - such as reading a book - and you suddenly look up...you might catch a ghost off guard and be able to see it for a split second. Like I said, I was 14, it was the middle of the afternoon, and after reading that...I could not force myself to look up from my book! There I sat, cross-legged, gripping my book while my knuckles turned white, saying over and over again in my mind "I won't look up, I won't look up, I won't look up." But I couldn't spend the rest of my life, sitting on my bed, refusing to look up from my book. I mean, dinner would be ready soon. So, on the count of 3 I forced myself to look up...and there was nothing there.

There hardly ever is.

But that doesn't stop me from looking.

You need to know this about me to understand this blog. Because I'm fascinated with the weird and unexplained, I like to look for those things as I go about my travels. Not all of my trips that I chronicle in this blog will be about the paranormal...I did spend 10 normal (well as normal as can be expected) days in Guatemala...and another trip was to New York City. But here and there I will write about those trips I took to just this side of weird.

(Cue eerie music here...)

~TT

Home Again

After a loooong day of flying, I finally have made it home to Las Vegas. But there were a few more things I wanted to share with you about my trip to Virginia.

First, though the movers hadn't shown up by the time I left, we did get some furniture for the apartment:


The couch as a couch...


...and as a bed!

Pretty nifty, if you ask me.

She also got a table with some chairs...


Not much...but it's a start. And definitely better than sitting on the floor. My body's getting too old for that.

We also got a chance to take the metro into DC for a little bit.




It was such a beautiful day for a stroll around the National Mall. So amazing to actually be there and see these awesome sights in person.

The Washington Memorial:


The Lincoln Memorial:



I totally wanted to go home and watch National Treasure after seeing all these places...the first one. :)

We also saw the Korean War Memorial, which was really neat with all these life-sized soldiers posed as if walking through the rain in the jungles of Korea:




Too many awesome sights and inspiring memorials to put on here. Can't wait to go back and see more.

It was also the National Cherry Blossom Festival and the trees turned out in all their splendor.



I couldn't have asked for a more beautiful time to be there.

We finished off our day by visiting the Washington DC temple (which is actually in Maryland).



I didn't know it would be so big and so tall. And so amazingly beautiful!

I thoroughly enjoyed my road trip. From Nevada to Arizona, New Mexico through Texas to Oklahoma; through Arkansas to Tennessee and finally on into Virginia. What a way to spend my Spring Break and see this wonderful, beautiful United States of America. I love this country!

I hope you've enjoyed coming with me on my road trip. I hope to be able to chronicle more upcoming trips on this blog. Until then, check back every once in awhile...I've got plenty of past trips that I may just put on here until I embark on my next adventure. Until then...

~TT

Day 6: Alexandria!

Day 6: Alexandria, VA

Total mileage from Gilbert, AZ to Alexandria, VA = 2,295.55 miles.

Whew! That's a loooooong way.

Today was a busy day. We spent it getting ready to move into Katy's apartment. Her appointment wasn't until 2:00pm. So, we slept in, packed up our things, checked out of the motel and headed to find somewhere to eat. Then it was time to move into her apartment! That was the easy part.

Here is what the outside of the place looks like:





It seems like a very nice area. Quiet. Gated. Family & single friendly.



Not much furniture in the apartment yet...still waiting for the movers to arrive:


The living Room.


Katy's bedroom.


Kitchen.


And the itty bitty linen closet. :)

I think it will be a good place to live. It makes me a little jealous...wishing I had my own place! I'll try to get back online tomorrow and add some pictures of the place...with furniture!

Until then...

~TT

Day 5: Big Stone Gap, VA to Alexandria, VA

Day 5: Big Stone Gap, VA to Alexandria, VA = 423.09 miles

Well, we did it. We finished our last leg of the 5-day journey today. We woke up to a beautiful, cool crisp morning high in the tops of the Appalachias. After checking out, we enjoyed a good ol' southern breakfast of biscuits and gravy at the Huddle House.



Funny name...good food.

We then continued on to see what we could of Big Stone Gap.
For those of you wondering why we stayed in a little town called Big Stone Gap...here's why: Katy and I are big fans of an author by the name of Adriana Trigiani. The first book I ever read of hers was called...wait for it...Big Stone Gap! It was a trilogy set in the little town of Big Stone Gap, VA. I never realized it was a real place until I was studying the maps for our road trip and saw it there on the map, in the lower southwest corner of the state. Once I realized it was a real place...I knew we had to stay there.

And that's just what we did!



Just a small mountain town. Not much to it. But we did see names of places that we recognized from the books. Which was fun. And it was quite beautiful up there in the mountains.

But it was time to head on. We headed down out of the mountains, to pick up the interstate again that would take us on into Alexandria.

Along the way, we did make one stop. It was at Natural Bridge, VA. A beautiful place with, of all things, a natural bridge! and caverns and lots of other interesting things to look at.

We love exploring caves, so we decided to take a quick tour of the Caverns at Natural Bridge.

It was neat inside those caverns. Not very big...the tour only lasted about 45 minutes. But there were beautiful formations and lots of water. It was very wet inside. There was even a pool of water, with water continually rushing in. Weird to hear the sound of rushing water, deep underneath the ground.

The funniest part of the whole tour was when we were visited by a little flying friend. The Caves are only open March through October. The other months they are closed because of the bats that call that place home. However, a few of them were hanging around. We saw about 7 total that were clinging tight to the rocks, hibernating. Really small, cute things...that is, until one decided that it didn't want to sleep and was flapping around. It came straight at our little tour group. You should have heard some of the women screaming. It was hilarious!! At one point, Katy was trying to take a picture down an unused tunnel that was all blackness. She was looking through her camera lens and I was watching her. I suddenly saw this black thing making its way up out of the darkness, straight for Katy! At the last minute, the bat swerved before it hit her. Thankfully, Katy didn't see it...and I didn't say anything until it was gone.



We then took a walk to see the Natural Bridge. This bridge was discovered in the 1700s. And was actually given to Thomas Jefferson in his land grant and stayed in his family until sometime in the 1800s. It was a beautiful walk to the bridge.



And as if seeing the caves and bridge were not enough. They had other attractions around the place. Like this one.



Who knew that cowboys fought dinosaurs? Or even rode them?


We didn't make it to dinosaur kingdom or the haunted monster museum. But they are there for another time! :)

The last few hours of the trip were uneventful and we finally arrived in Alexandria. Once again, it was dark, so we were unable to see anything, except buildings and traffic. But we found our hotel and settled in for the night. Tomorrow would be a busy day...and an exciting one as we move into Katy's apartment!

~TT

Day 4: Memphis, TN to Big Stone Gap, VA

Day 4: Memphis, TN to Big Stone Gap, VA = 528.22 miles



What do a king, a greek god, and a minister all have in common?


Nothing...except they were all on our way to Virginia.

Day 4 started out with the most anticipated part of our roadtrip...a visit to Graceland!



Coming up to the house itself, I was surprised by the size of it. When I thought of Graceland, I thought of a huge mansion. It was still a nice sized house, but not a huge, opulent mansion. We were able to take a tour of the inside, but the downstairs only. The tour guide told us that Elvis always kept the upstairs his private space, only entertaining downstairs, so the upstairs was still kept off limits to visitors, out of respect for the King of Rock n' Roll. What we saw of downstairs was interesting enough.











Not really my style of decorating...but hey, to each their own. Some of it was pretty crazy, including shag carpeting on the wall, ceiling, etc.

We also got to tour the rest of the grounds, that included his dad's office, the trophy room and what used to be the racquetball court...which now holds all of his records, and costumes.







And we were able to pay our respects to the King. His gravesite rests there on the grounds of Graceland...



This has definitely been the highlight of our roadtrip across America.

We left Graceland, and continued our journey East toward Virginia. We spent most of the day just driving across the state of Tennessee. It was during this time that we had the most random thing happen to us on the journey. We've been using a GPS system to help us navigate, especially when we get off the beaten path to see some of the roadside distractions. As we neared Nashville, we had heard about a replica of the Parthenon in the city that we wanted to visit. We typed in the address into the GPS system, and it told us to get off the highway in just a few miles. Which was kind of weird, because we were still 30-40 miles away from Nashville. But we got off the road anyway, and followed the GPS unit.

Turn after turn we followed the directions of the GPS...not really knowing where it was taking us or why. We were in some small suburbs of Nashville, but no where close to Nashville itself. Then we realized that the GPS was taking us right back to the highway we had been on. Such a random, weird route with no reason at all for us taking it.

But if we hadn't taken it...we never would have seen some of the most beautiful countryside that we had seen all trip...or run across this neat little place:







After that fun little find on our weird detour, we made our way back onto the highway and into Nashville. There we found this replica of the Parthenon in the middle of a city park. It was built in 1897 for the Tennessee Centennial Expo. Why they chose the parthenon with a HUMONGOUS statue of Athena inside, I don't know...but it was interesting to see.





That was a neat place to take a brief pitstop at, but it was time to get back onto the road. We still had a long way to go, and it was getting late. But as we continued on past Nashville, we came to a little town called Crossville. I had heard of this place called the Ministers Treehouse and had directions to it. It was right off the highway, so even though the sun was beginning to go down, we decided to make a quick detour to see it.

I'm glad we did. It was definitely worth seeing.

But seriously, one of the most creepiest places I have ever been too...and it probably didn't help that we were there at sunset.









You could tell it had once been lived in. There were tell-tale signs. There was even a big room serving as a chapel, with pews, choir boxes, a pulpit and bible. But that just helped add to the creepiness of it all. Around every corner I kept expecting to see someone in a hockey mask jump out in front of us with a chainsaw.

But nothing like that happened. Katy & I made it safely out of there and continued on our way to Big Stone Gap, VA. It had been a very eventful day, but we were ready to hit the sack.

Tomorrow, I'll have more to tell, as we continued our trek across the USA. Until then...

~TT

P.S. Tennessee was SO beautiful! My favorite state, by far. Seriously, I want to move there...especially around the Nashville area. Loved it!