Ready to Hit the Road

We have decided to break up the first planned day of travel on Tuesday into two days.  340 miles from Highlands to Fayetteville, WV, where the New River Gorge is located, seemed like a long way to drive on the first day of our road trip.  And then there is the other factor:  we are nearly packed and we are ready to hit the road.  So we have decided to drive to Wytheville, VA tomorrow and then less than two hours to Fayetteville on Tuesday, which will allow for more time visiting the Gorge and its iconic bridge, an engineering marvel constructed in 1977.

This is a photo I found on the internet on the National Park Service website.  But this is the last time I will post stock photos from the internet.  After we depart in the morning, we will see these sights for ourselves, with our own eyes, and capture them forever on our cameras and in our memories.  That is what is so wonderful about travel.  On the eve of our trip to the UK and Ireland in 2019, I wrote this on the blackboard:

We have seen photos of Stonehenge and the Eiffel Tower and the Mediterranean Sea for most of our lives.  But we will never forget walking across that wide field on Salisbury Plain dotted with clumps of sheep dung early in the morning and slowly approaching those huge standing stones, or toasting each other with champagne on the very top of the Eiffel Tower and gazing down at Paris and the lazy curve of the Seine river below us, or seeing that indescribably bright blue Mediterranean Sea on the Côte d'Azur.  Those unforgettable moments of beauty experienced in person.

 Yes, we are ready to hit the road!