Dinosaur Kingdom

First, I give you a cute picture of Ozzy being "hatched" from a Dino egg.

In small town called Natural Bridge in Viriginia there is a man by the name of Mark Cline who likes to create odd roadside attractions. One of these is Dinosaur Kingdom (which has Haunted House attached to it as well).

The premise of Dinosaur Kingdom is that a group of archaeologists have been digging and uncovered an underground cavern of dinosaurs. It just so happens that the Union Army stumbles upon the dinosaurs and wants to wrangle them up and use them against the Confederate army (this of course taking place during the Civil War).

Just Bizarre.

What's more bizarre that by the end of it all I could think was "what a strange expression of Southern aggression". But maybe I'm just cynical. Regardless, we loved it.

But if Dinosaurs and Haunted Houses aren't your "thing", Cline has also created Foamhenge (the Foam equivalent of StoneHenge) and there is also a Wax museum with a factory tour of how they make the figures. And a butterfly exhibit. We didn't do all of those things. Just the Kingdom/House/Henge.

AND there are some Caverns in Natural Bridge. And a Natural Bridge. SO you could easily spend 2 days seeing things in this very teeny tiny place.

Things to remember for Virginia

Next time we come to Virginia want to remember a few things.

1- Stay in Charlottesville longer and really enjoy their downtown! It's hella cute!

2- Take the Skyline Drive up to Winchester

3- Take a wander around Winchester. Patsy Cline lived there! PATSY, people, Patsy. What the hell. I'm still kicking myself...

4- Get a "Virginia is for Lovers" sticker for Loretta's hat.

So we broke a few "Rules"

I'll start by saying that we went up Charlottesville VA to meet/visit a friend and her family and it was awesome. I thought Charlottesville was adorable and I now want to take my little sister up there and go camping. I will make her enjoy it (no seriously, I think she will).

We needed a roof rack. We have been packed like sardines in the car, hoping we could make it work, but we just couldn't. So we spent a good 2 hours trying to find one. Dick's Sporting Goods had 2 but couldn't find the keys to unlock them. The Subaru dealership wanted $500 (!?!?!??!) for one plus installation costs. Finally we found the perfect one at Sears, ON SALE and was easy to install. We call it "Loretta's Hat".

So then we decided to go a bit out of our ways to see Dinosaur Kingdom in Natural Bridge. Natural Bridge is weird, but a good kind of quirky weird. Their attractions consist of some caverns (that we didn't go see, because the country is full of caverns and I really would like to see the caverns in Carlsbad again, and I'm assuming if you've seen one cavern, you've probably seen em all. I could be wrong tho). ANYWAYS, their other attractions included Dinosaur Kingdom, a Haunted House, a Wax Museum (with a factory tour!) and a toy museum. O, and Foamhenge (like Stonehenge, but made of foam). We did 3 of these. Dino, Haunted and Foam. They were all awesome and completely worth the trip out.

But the plan was to see these things and then head up to the outskirts of DC and set up camp. So we started driving and realized we are not going to make it to camp before dark. Not good, and against one of our "Rules". So we decided we'd drive till we felt like stopping, eat dinner and stay in a hotel for an evening. We had said we'd do a hotel when we wanted/needed it, so no biggie.

During our drive we were caught in a HUGE rain storm. I'm talking driving down the interstate at 30 with hazzards on rainstorm. Not fun at all, but it made us all the more happy we weren't camping because that would have sucked. So we sorta dodged a bullet there.

So we find a Cracker Barrel and stop for dinner. I had chicken fried chicken with a side of fried okra and steak fries (to dip in the gravy). SO GOOD. mmmmmmmmm. Then we pull into a hotel for the night. Only they are all booked up. What the hell? It's not like we're near anything important. So we pull into the next. AGAIN. All booked up.

Apparently the 40 miles garage sale was going on this weekend and EVERY hotel in the 40 mile radius was completely full up. Not good. Oz was seriously done with being in the car and he has acquired the highest squeal EVAR. I was on complete edge and feeling sick, hearing his cries an it till us close to an hour to finally find a hotel to stay in. A bit more than we wanted to pay, but we got a good night's sleep. And thereyago.

O The Rules. We had said we would never do the late night driving not knowing where we'd stay and have Oz all stressed out. *sighs*

Virginia is for Lovers

Greetings from our Road Trip! I am currently sitting in a Starbucks in Richmond, VA trying to not look like a complete douche by typing on the laptop. I'm probably not succeeding. I'm sure people trying to enjoy their frappacino's are a little annoyed at a very hyper Oz as well. Ah well. What can you do?

So the drive up was pretty uneventful, but that's a good thing, right? AMAZINGLY, Oscar slept most of the journey up, which was awesome.

Once we got into Richmond it was close to 630 so we had to find the KOA campground site we had a reserved a tent site for the night. I know, I know, KOA is hardly rustic, but considering we have 0 camping skills between us, it seemed like a good idea to start our journey at. We got the tent up with no problems and started cooking up dinner, which was a chicken/cheese/saucey/bread crumb mix. It was good, and I only burned one side just a bit. Totally edible :D Oz even ate the chicken so I took it as a good sign.

Unfortunately, Oz wasn't a fan of the site itself and he was a bit freaked out during the evening and just wanted to be held. By the end of the evening he was happy to be in the tent, and he laid down to nurse with me easily and was asleep by 930, with Griff and I to follow by 1030. We woke up bright and early at 7 and it was LOVELY.

Seriously, we had such a great morning. Oz woke up dancing to the alarm clock, it was nice and cool outside. Griff and Oz had a shower and then after getting Oz dressed I was able to take one (see, another KOA perk!). Then we set to cooking breakfast. Griff made us tea and set out some blueberries for Oz, which he of course devoured. Then we had french toast. YUM. It was a great morning and we were set to head into the city by 1030 and it was just starting to get a bit warm.

Overall, I'm sorry to say, I don't really like Richmond. The city is laid out wacky and is difficult to get around. We went to the Edgar Allan Poe museum and the Museum of the Confederacy; which I felt weird about at first but we enjoyed it. History is history, even the parts that make us uncomfortable. Ozzy was SUPER loud in there tho, which makes me a bit anxious about taking him to the Holocaust museum in DC. So we finished the day early, allowing me time to blog some and then we are heading to the store to pick up dinner for tonight.

I think we may pick up a roof rack for the car tho. Our car is uncomfortably pack like a sardine. I thought we were over packing, but hell, we're packed for about 3 months and it's pretty minimum compared to what I've seen people back for a weekend at the beach before! SO hopefully today we'll get a roof rack and an electric blow-up-the-mattress-thingy.

We have a few more things to see in Virginia and then it's off to DC!!!