Will's Splendid Staycation

Living eight hours away from home means that I cannot travel to see the Paradis clan as much as I might like. That 1000-mile roundtrip is a mean thing to ask my car to do twice in two weeks, and, furthermore, I'm finding considerable adventure right here inside Old Dominion.

Friday Night: After AHIP with a trip to the Downtown Mall with my little brother in MLP. We both had our first experience with Five Guys (life-changing) and I learned the hard way that when you ask for a large order of fries, what you're REALLY getting at Five Guys is a huge bag filled to the brim with fries with a large-size cup buried somewhere underneath the layers of fried potatoes. Dinner was followed by attending the "Ghost and Murder Mystery Tour", ideal for a ten-year-old because 1) it's semi-educational, 2) it's about a murder, 3) you move around a lot and 4) the guy giving the tour wears a tophat. After I dropped off my little back home the evening concluded with a pow-wow with the Order of the Silver Stein and a powerful session of sleep.

Saturday: Woke up early, but not as early as I was supposed to thanks to my lazy and unreliable alarm clock. I met with Sat and Denny and together we explored the splendor of the Charlottesville Farmers' Market. We scored some Jam (according to Daniel), some delicious bread, illegal goat cheese, and the best fudge I've ever had in my life. A crazy guy yelled at me for talking on the trolley ride back, and then after I cleaned myself up I met with Catherine to drive to the Chesapeake Bay area. For those of you who didn't know, Adam Robinson, an alumni of Theta, got married this weekend to a lovely and delightfully eccentric girl he met just last year as a Lawnie. The cermony was beautiful and featured wind chimes, bluegrass, barbeque, line-dancing, and yours truly playing a small set of folksy songs with the band. The evening concluded with a powerful drum circle on the docks behind the Robinsons' house, and a very broken bit of sleep in a sleeping bag on their trampoline. Among things that kept me up were some extremely heavy dew, an alarm clock going off in the woods at three in the morning, and the neighbors blaring country radio from 3am to 7am.

Sunday: I felt surprisingly rested the next morning and drove back early with Catherine to get ready for my next night of adventure. Throwing a few items together in my sorely underused hiking pack I met up with Annia and Matt Mason to go explore Natural Bridge, VA. We drove along the highway listening to Car Talk and made a stop at the sorely underappreciated Foamhenge, a life-sized styrofoam replica of Stonehenge, only this one has a fiber-glass statue of Merlin surfing on a floating rock. Following Foamhenge we drove a little further on and hiked into Jefferson National Forest. The hike was ridiculously strenuous. Very steep like the hike to Humpback but also very long like the hike to Blue Hole. After an epic uphill battle, however we reached our destination: the fabled Devil's Marbleyard, a place where it seemed the common laws of physics didn't exist and where giant granite boulders could just all appear on a mountainside and hold together without rolling down. We hiked further on, ate lunch, and set up camp off the path. After laying down our packs we hiked back down and scrambled across the Marbleyard soaking in the breathtaking view until sunset. Really, I can't describe this spot and do it serious justice, but it was easily the coolest location I've ever hiked to. There are apparently caves in the yard we didn't even know about, so you can bet I'll be heading back for another look. In the moonlight we hiked back up to camp, built a tiny but admirable fire, and clocked out around 10 or 11.

Monday: We woke up when we felt like it, chatted around our fireplace fom the night before, packed ourselves back up and meandered back down the mountain. thoroughly tired, hungry, and thirsty, we decided the next logical step was to find really good barbeque. After chatting it up with two guys whose job seemed to be just hanging out in the gas station, he told us where we could find the best barbeque between Natural Bridge and Staunton, at a place called Peck's. We drove out that way and were thrilled to find the ideal barbeque place: nothing fancy, just amazingly delicious, greasy food. I plowed through a mountain of ribs and prepared myself for the ensuing food coma. The rest of the drive back was pleasant and quiet, and when I got back home I showered, put some tea on boil, downed it, and had one of the most powerful naps of my life. Last night featured dinner and exquisite conversation with easily my best non-Thetan friend at UVA, and the fact I knew that I still had one more day to do nothing was all kinds of awesome.

There will be a separate, epically detailed account of tonight's Gallon Challenge to follow. Overall, best break I've had in a loooooooooooong time.