Prior to coming here, I'd no clue as to what the states we'd be driving through were like by way of scenery. In Kentucky, West Virginia, Tennessee and the south of North Carolina, we were amazed at the sheer volume of trees and the huge wonderful hills. The only place I can liken it to is the dense native bush up north in the Coromandel region of New Zealand ... only this is continuous for hundreds of miles. It has a wild and wonderful feel to it and bar the highway exits with a huge range of fast food places (which we are most grateful for) and the other motorists on the road, you get the feeling that the place is totally unpopulated! Road trip snapshots (to follow)
We drove through NC in two days, breaking it overnight near Asheville and then in Raleigh having visited the Children's Museum in Oak ridge TN (thanks Brian) which was a really fun stop. I liked the fact that the kids were able to interact with everything in all the exhibits - the motto of the museum is "please touch". We also learned a little about the history of Oak Ridge which was established in the early 1940s as a base for the Manhattan Project - the massive U.S. government operation that developed the atomic bomb.
Other unplanned breaks were Fort Dodds - a historic site dating back to the French and Indian War of 1754 and Halifax - an early 1700s colonial town in the Roanoak Valley.
1 comment:
Yep. My sentiments exactly. Driving north from Raleigh through Virginia, you wonder is there any end to these TREES? And such gorgeous trees in October, too. We took an unexpected side trip to Five Points--a U.S. Nat'l historic spot (small) and it was the best stop (even better than Williamsburg). It was a spur of the moment stop and the kids got to dress up like civil war soldiers and handle all the bayonets and equipment and hang out on the real cannon and learn about the last major battle of the Civil War. Never know what one might find off the main path!
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