Visiting Virginia

Since moving to Atlanta, one of the things I have really been wanting to do was drive to Virginia and visit people I know there from my internship in summer 2010. While I am much closer than I was in Utah, it's still about a ten hour drive each way. Or eleven hours if I split it into two drives and spend a night in North Carolina. I tried it both ways.

I had decided to go up on Presidents Day weekend, because I need the extra day for the long travel time. And then I decided in order to see everyone I wanted to, I needed another day. Luckily my boss seemed to have no problem giving me that Friday off as well (it's our slow season right now, so that helps).

I actually stayed in Durham on Thursday night with Mindy and Jeran's friends, Mary and Adam, since Mindy and Jeran were in Utah visiting. It was kind of nice having the drive split up in two, and talking to my mom all the way through South Carolina helped, too. I really enjoy the bluetooth feature in my car that allows me to talk to people while I drive. Legally. Talking to people really makes the driving time disappear - on the way home I had plentiful time to talk to many people, so that was very fun. This was the first long solo road trip, and I was quite happy that it went so well and really didn't seem that difficult.

There were four main groups/people that I visited with: The Care of Trees office in Dulles (where I interned), the Anderson family (where I lived), Ryan Royston (best friend), and the Jenkins (good friends of the Andersons and now mine).

My visit to TCOT was rather impromptu and unannounced. I just drove over for fun, to see the once-familiar route and hopefully be able to chat with some old coworkers. Luck was with me, and I arrived at the office just near the end of the day, so I was able to surprise everyone with my random visit. I talked with Jeremy (boss and friend) for a while, but also Dave, Dean, Mark, Doug, and Ron as they were coming back from their work days. It was fun to see them again, and to know that I could go work there whenever I wanted - according to Jeremy.

I spent a lot of time at the Andersons', since that's where I was staying for the weekend, but we didn't really do anything together. It was more casual than that, like I belonged there and it wasn't at all different for me to stay there. It was a whole lot of fun memories though. Like the picture frame on the wall with the store-provided photos, or the chocolate crispies for breakfast.

Ryan and I spent quite a lot of time together. Dinner on Friday night at IHOP, where we compared our nice new cars and dealership stories (he'd gotten his car that day, so it was fun to compare notes. Our cars are quite similar). Saturday afternoon we went to McKay Used Books, Inc in Manassas. SO FUN! They have so many books, movies, music, everything. We spent hours there. I ended up buying some movies, a famous buildings of the world book, and a beautiful big book of Sherlock Holmes - it has every single Conan Doyle story, and it looks like it's never been opened before. Fun! Then we had dinner and watched some movies (including the home video his little brother had just finished editing together. I rather liked Thor, but watching Count of Monte Cristo just makes me upset at how completely inferior it is to the book. In every way. It was so good to see Ryan again - it's been almost five months since I've seen him, and two months since I've spent significant time with a close friend who's not also a family member. It was sad to leave because who knows when the next opportunity to visit will be.

I spent Sunday evening with the Jenkins' at Pemberley (that's what their house is called. They're both very big Jane Austen fans). We had a nice pot roast dinner and visited for a while.

I really loved my visit to Virginia, it felt a lot like being at home. Not home home, but a home. Very familiar and comfortable, lots of friends and family type people. I wish I could visit again soon, but it's a really long drive and I have so many other places to visit and explore.