Days 37-40: Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, to Merchantville, New Jersey, to McLean, Virginia

Tuesday 29 October – I had such good results from driving up the secondary road a bit before getting back on the highway when I was in Adel, Georgia, that I decided to try it in Roanoke Rapids.  Of course there’s a complicated intersection by the interstate-exit motel-cluster.  I was stopped for the light when the driver’s side door of the Dodge Dakota pick-up truck next to me opened.  A tall, lean man, maybe in his 30s, with an impressive mustache, stepped out into the street, retrieved a soda can from the edge of his truck bed, turned around and stepped back up into the cab and closed the door.  I don’t know how far he’d been driving.  I don’t know whether he was as cool about having left his soda on the truck as he looked, or berating himself for stupidity, or cursing someone for distracting him, or pleased that the can hadn’t tumbled away into the street, or laughing a little on the inside – because it was, after all, pretty funny.

Rosemary Baptist

In the next five miles, I saw four churches, a tabernacle and a religious ‘outreach center.’  There were lots of small houses, mostly single story, some trailer-style.  There were scrappy little general stores and an industrial laundry and several feed and farm stores.  I did not see farms on this short stretch of road, but I’d seen cotton fields from Route 95, and what seemed to be hay fields, and I’d seen a sign somewhere that suggested there were peanut farms in the area.  I did see three or four semis in my ten-mile round trip, all going in different directions, loaded with more-or-less tree-length logs.  The landscape was gently hilly, with lots of tall trees of many breeds, but I did not see any stretch that looked like it might have been the scene of a recent harvesting of trees.

I stopped at one of the farm stores because it was advertising 25% off shrubbery, and I thought a shrub might make a good hostess gift for Sister3, toward whose home I was aimed.  A store clerk greeted me in a voice that explained what the desk clerk last night meant when she asked if she sounded ‘country.’  She sounded ‘warm kitchen with honey somewhere;’ this man sounded country.  He invited me to make myself at home, look around, ask him if I had any questions, and then he just kept talking and talking.

He pointed out the 25%-off, noting that it applied to the roses.  He’s never done anything to his roses, now you might look them up on the computer and it may say to do something – maybe a little fertilizer – but he’s never done anything to his, and they do just fine.  He said all of that at least twice and maybe three or four times.  “Look them up on the computer.”  He was white, about 60, lean and a bit shorter than average, and nice as a puppy.

I picked out a gardenia, which by the way is insane.  I love how the flowers smell, but NoVA is a bit cool for gardenia, although they do grow outdoors here if carefully situated.  But I’m probably moving north, and anyway this was supposed to be a hostess gift for my sister outside Philadelphia, where there is no site careful enough to sustain a gardenia.  And I might not even have a home; maybe I’ll move in with a friend or get an apartment.  I really, really love gardenias, though, and maybe I’ll find a home with a little greenhouse attached.  Plus, it was 25% off.

McLean, Virginia, overgrown shrubbery

The clerk kindly carried my gardenia to the car, since, as he said, I’d have to do all the work of planting it.  I did not tell him about the imaginary greenhouse.  He advised me to drive carefully, and asked where I was headed.  On learning of my Virginia home, he told me he’d been to Maryland recently, to visit family.  He seemed not to think much of it; there were a lot more people in suburban DC than there are here in Roanoke Rapids, and all moving faster – "a rat race."

I mentioned that I was coming to the end of a 9,000-mile trip.  “Bless your heart,” he said, and told me about a recent trip he’d made.  He drove the two hours or so to hike Big Meadows park, near Charlottesville.  I think this is in the Shenandoah Mountains, and most likely beautiful.  There was a lengthy story about finding an iPod in the parking lot, and phoning the various numbers listed on it.  The third number was the owner’s daughter; when feed-store guy described a hiker he’d seen on trail and the cars he’d seen in the lot, she recognized her dad.  Dad was thrilled to get his iPod back; his life is on that device.  Etc.

When he goes to Big Meadows, he makes a day of it – leaves at 8:00am, gets back about 8:00pm.  There’s no place around here as good, he told me.  There’s a small mountain (this may be Medoc Mountain, but I’m not sure), but he wouldn’t recommend I go there as it’s not a good area.  What does that mean?  And did he miss the part that I’ve just driven all around the country, and am headed to Washington, DC?  Or maybe he figures that after 9,000 miles, I might be in the mood to jaunt over to Medoc Mountain and take a look.  He did keep inviting me to come back again, as they’ve got all sizes of rock, beach sand, mulch... which is clearly missing a point or two.  Eventually, he tapped the trunk twice and headed back into the shop.

These were great little stories, and a snapshot – maybe a collage of snapshots – of one person’s life.  I really enjoyed them, and to the very slight degree necessary, encouraged him to talk.  Well, maybe just didn’t discourage him.  But occasionally, listening to him repeat some part of his story, I would wonder about this.  When a total stranger pulls into my tiny corner of the world and tells me she’s just seen dozens of places I’ve never been; never imagined being, I want to hear about it.  I start asking questions, not telling stories.  Still, I’m glad to have heard his.  And frankly, as much as I like telling you about my travels and my thoughts on these pages, when we meet in person I’ll probably try to get you talking about your adventures.  I am an INTP, in case you’re interested in that sort of thing.

George Washington, mounted.

The gardenia nestled on the floor in the back, I took 95 up to Richmond, the capital of Virginia.  I came in past Marlboro smokestacks, a Peterbilt yard of some sort, and structures I believe were tobacco-drying sheds:  a tatty industrial neighborhood on the outskirts of the city.  Then I crossed over the James River, and into the high-rise, steel-and-glass downtown.  Steel, glass and marble, with lots of stately seats of government and many, many statues of heroes of the colonial era, the revolution and the confederacy.  I read an essay recently by a commentator dismayed by the number of U.S. government facilities named forconfederate politicians and soldiers, on the grounds that they were, in fact, traitors to the U.S. government.  I’m willing to believe it’s more complicated than that, but in my Union-bred brain, confederacy just equals slavery.  And slavery equals indefensible, inexcusable evil.  I was glad to have seen, finally, the capital city of the commonwealth in which I’ve resided for almost ten years, but I was perfectly happy to leave.

Sublime Potomac

Two hours of trees – evergreens mixed with deciduous, now decked in yellows and dull oranges, with occasional glints of greens – got me back to DC in time for rush hour.  So I stopped in at a friend’s house, wandered the glorious woods and stood awestruck on a cliff over the Potomac.  I have stood in this spot a dozen times, and others very like it dozens more, and I hope I am always awestruck by that sublime view.  My friends eventually got home from work, and we chatted and caught up for a bit, which was very grounding.  I headed north again – three hours – once the traffic had dissipated a bit.  By the time I made it to the Delaware Welcome Center Travel Plaza rest area, most of the restaurants had closed.  It wasn’t much past 9:00pm, so I was wildly disappointed in the recently-razed-and-rebuilt Delaware Welcome Center.  If the highway doesn’t close at 9:00pm, the rest area shouldn’t close at 9:00pm.  Sheesh.

Sneaking into Sister3’s house at whatever o’clock at night, I felt a door close on a great adventure.  Then I opened the next one.  (Sister 3’s house has a sun porch, so you have to go through two doors to get in to where the bedrooms are.  Ha!)

Wednesday 29 October to Friday 1 November – Love the lovely family.  Love the cute, mostly-well-mannered dogs.  Love the cute and financially-inefficient little town and the children dressed up for Hallowe’en.  Niece6 was Bubbles from the Powerpuff Girls, and Niece7 was Rosie the Riveter.  I love these girls.  They take the road less traveled.

Proper foliage at last.

As I drove home again, the superhighway was a perfection of fall foliage, and I took pictures through the sunroof.  New Jersey was as beautiful as could be, with leaves of every shade of red, orange, yellow, and lots of greens and muddy purples.  There were brilliant blue ponds and streams, and the grass was mostly non-sparkly green with patches of brown, and orange where the pine needles had dropped.  About five miles before the Delaware border, I saw a cornfield.

Love the lovely EZPass, but strongly dislike the toll booths on the Delaware Memorial Bridge, which insist I slow to five miles per hour.  Leaving the state less than 30 minutes later, the Delaware toll plaza lets me speed right along the real highway, with sensors in a technological-marvel roof hitting up my transponder for four bucks.

Havre de Grace, Maryland, has a beautiful river view and a beautiful name.  I have stopped there a few times, seeking grace and a fancy sandwich, and have left without even a decent lunch.  So I don’t try anymore.  I just roll by, enjoying the stubble fields that come after the river.  Even the oft-traveled bit from Baltimore to NoVA did not feel like just another nuisance, this time.  I wonder if I’m really changed forever.

Almost home.  Weird.