Take Me Home, Country Roads

Here it is (finally)! Pics below in no particular order and rather large blog below...


The Pool
Ashley and I at the Olive Garden
In the hot tub...ahhhhh...
By the Kahwaha River
On the drive home
More of the drive home


Ashley in "The Lagoon"


Well, this past weekend proved to me that I've still got it. Spontaneity, that is. I was beginning to feel rather old and non-fun and then Ashley, out of the blue, says "pack your bags and be ready to leave for West Virginia at 10 am tomorrow." This was 12 hours prior to our departure. So I was going off to the motherland, so to speak. My mom is a West Virginia native and I had never been to Charleston. We had a few adventures to say the least! On the way there, Ashley coerced me into driving her car, which is standard, and I don't drive standard. I was fine in fifth, just cruising on the highway, but if I had to slow down and shift, or say, turn left at an intersection, I tended to freak out and pull over and make Ashley drive after her cardiac arrest with my episode.

Once we arrived in Charleston (safely, suprisingly) we pulled into the parking lot of the Ramada Plaza Hotel which was in the industrial, other-side-of-the-tracks area of Charleston. Yay...
BUT, the hotel was awesome! It had a comedy club (which we never went to) and a lounge (which was sketchy and often had mafia-looking guys in pimp suits hanging out in it). But the best part and probably the saving grace for the weekend was the lagoon with pool, hot tub, and exercise room. Our room was mediocre but it included a mediocre hot breakfast in the morning so it was a steal!

The first night consisted of crashing after watching "House, M.D." and snacking. And then it happened. Ashley saved my life in the middle of the night. I woke up to Ashley gripping my shoulders firmly and rocking me towards her. Naturally, I was kind of freaked, so I said, "Ashley, Ashley...are you okay? What's going on?" She let go of me and mumbled, "uh, but...you..um..you were crying..." to which I replied, "Was I? oh okay." The next morning, after not sleeping because of the ice machine coming on every 30 seconds in the hall and sounding like the eternal vacuum, I brought up the little nightly adventure and Ashley hid her flushed face and said, "I was having a dream that you were falling off a cliff and I was saving your life. And you should feel special because usually I attack people in my sleep. I hoped you would have forgotten about it. " I laughed. "Well, I'm honoured." The funny thing is that it happened again the next night and I turned to her, "Um, Ashley..." and she said, "How many times in one weekend can this happen..." Yet, she doesn't remember saying that.

So, on Saturday: Target, Olive Garden, and a couple other stores. Why? Because it was actually -10 rather than the 19 degrees celsius it was supposed to be according to the Weather network. And we double checked...it definitely said celsius!! Arrrgghhhhhhh....So, there was NOTHING to do in Charleston. It consisted of the golden-domed capitol building and numerous other stately buildings, and a few plazas nestled into the mountains. But, I wouldn't recommend a road trip to W.V. in February if you actually intend to DO things there. So that is why the pool/hot tub came in rather handy. I did score a nice jacket on our trip and our unlimited soup, salad and bread sticks at the Olive Garden were pretty yum. That night we went to a little Mexican restaurant next to our hotel to have dessert for supper. We got bold and decided to try REAL Margaritas. Big mistake. They have three shots of Tequila in each as well as a shot of Jose Cuervo, which I later found out is also Tequila. I tried to tell our non-English speaking Mexican waiter that I couldn't drink it because it was making me sick and I was patting my belly. Then he asked me if I was pregnant. The flan was good.

So we headed out fairly soon on Sunday to come back home. The trip back was much more quick. I drove...somewhat more successfully. We stopped at the Cracker Barrel, but not at the Jelly Belly factory :o( because it was closed. Pooper. But we had a great and safe trip and we were able to shop at the duty free! YAY! It was good times. Ashley is certainly a fun person to go on a road trip with. It promises adventures no matter where you go!