May 5, 2012 by Rae

Tokyo Thai Restaurant, Smithfield, VA

Tonight, I planned to come back to the hotel, have the other half of my Subway sandwich, and crash with a movie. But driving through Smithfield, a restaurant name caught my eye, Tokyo Thai. I haven’t had pad thai since Eugene, so my stomach rumbled. I decided to get to the hotel and look up the restaurant.

The reviews for this Asian fusion restaurant were excellent. They apparently serve some of the best sushi in the area and their Thai offerings are also highly rated. I decided I wasn’t in the mood for sushi (!) and that I would give their pad thai a try.

The restaurant is lovely, with the tables separated from the entrance, making it feel like you’re entering into a cozy cocoon. It has both booths and tables. I gave the menu a cursory glance and there was quite a variety of cuisines. Prices were reasonable so in addition to a chicken pad thai ($9) I added their Thai summer roll ($4), a cool and crispy combination of carrot, cucumber, and shrimp wrapped in sticky rice paper and served with a sweet chili sauce.

The pad thai soothed my itch. It wasn’t the best I’ve ever had since I felt that it was missing something, relying too much on heat to give it flavour, but a squirt of lime juice finished the dish beautifully. The texture of the dish was perfect and oh-so-comfort-foody. The chicken in it was lovely. I tend to be nervous about ordering chicken pad thai instead of veggie or tofu because the chicken tends to be slimy and unrecognizable. This pad thai had mouthfuls of moist and flavourful chicken breast. The portion was really generous; I probably should have had half of both dishes and brought the rest back for lunch tomorrow.

I would definitely recommend Smithfield’s Toyko Thai. If I’m in the area long enough, I will probably go back and try one of their sushi bento lunch specials!

May 4, 2012 by Rae

A Long Overdue Hampton Roads Homecoming

Around 5 this afternoon, I was finally able to take off and do the 45 miles that would take me to the end of this segment of my trip. I never thought I would be so grateful to see an Econolodge; I’m staying at the same hotel I stayed at four years ago. Would you believe that I was given the same room?! Hilarious!

I texted my friend an “OMG, I made it!!!” message, took a shower, and headed over to pick her up. I can’t even describe how wonderful it was to finally make it. The emotions were almost overwhelming.

I’d joked that I had sent a ‘huge’ Amazon order over to her place. It turns out that said order arrived in pieces so there was a ton of boxes waiting for me. We loaded up the car and came back to the hotel. It’d been so long since I’d made up the order that I didn’t remember most of what was in those boxes. It turns out there was a lot of useful stuff, including a new electric blanket with a timer on it. 🙂

My friend had bought tickets for the midnight premiere of The Avengers (thank you!!!) so we headed out for a very late Applebee’s dinner that will double as brunch tomorrow. The movie was awesome and hilarious and totally worth the insanely long day. It’s 3:45AM right now and I can’t remember the last time I was up so late. I’ve planned a well earned sleep in. 🙂

May 1, 2012 by Rae

Almost Heaven

Almost heaven, West Virginia
Blue Ridge Mountains
Shenandoah River –
Life is old there
Older than the trees
Younger than the mountains
Growin’ like a breeze
Country Roads, take me home

I was very excited yesterday morning as I hit the road knowing that I would be at my friend’s within the day. It has been four years and one month since we last saw each other. I have traveled more than 27,000km since I last saw her. I couldn’t imagine anything sweeter after such a long journey than to fall into the arms of my oldest and dearest friend. A few more days now…

Because I had some mountain driving ahead of me, I planned yesterday that it would be a short driving day and that I would not be arriving at my friend’s. I took my time getting on the road and had a long break at the rest area after Charleston. This was my first time ever seeing a restaurant (snack bar) at a rest area!

I was purposely setting myself up to make arrival at her place too late to be feasible so that I wouldn’t rush through the day, get distracted, and get into an accident. Now that you know my mindset yesterday, it becomes even more evident why I don’t blame myself for the toad’s demise.

The section of I-64 between Charleston and Beckley is the West Virginia Turnpike, a toll road. I had reviewed the list of tolls ahead of time and felt that the information was very clear. I was a motorhome towing the equivalent of a trailer so I would have to pay $3.25 twice. I made sure to get a bunch of singles and quarters when I bought some things at Walmart the night before so I would have exact change. The first toll booth guide was visibly surprised that I had my exact fare in hand!

approaching the second toll booth

So that was yesterday. The accident happened just after the second toll booth.

This morning, I set off in good spirits. Miranda was purring and nothing felt amiss. I have done a lot of mileage in my rig and know how she behaves. She never hinted at been hurt today. Oh, sweet Miranda, aren’t you supposed to tell me you’re hurtin’ before you keen?

I hadn’t been on the road long today when I got a hint that the big challenge of the day, the 7% 5-mile long descent, was upon me:

Almost there:

At the summit:

Here we go! *gulp*

Motorhome goes into D2 and we start the hill at 40MPH.

What is it about those Blue Ridge Mountains?

Halfway there!

Recommended truck speed is 45MPH. The engine would start strain at that speed, so that’s when I’d hit the brakes, about four times total over the five miles.

Done!

Have I mentioned in this post how much I love the Blue Ridge Mountains?

It was coming on lunchtime when I hit Lewisburg, so I did something I just about never do when towing the car, I made an unplanned exit from the highway for something other than fuel. In plain English, that means I saw a sign for Applebee’s and I heeded its call. 😀 I barely eaten anything the day before and had very little for breakfast, so that was just what I needed to get those gastric juices flowing again. I headed in the general direction of the Applebee’s and noticed a Walmart, so I decided to park there since the Applebee’s would be nearby. It turned out to be right next door. I ordered a pasta and salad lunch deal but only had room for the salad (and a one-bite brownie with ice cream), so I got a to-go box for the pasta. $11 for lunch and dinner, not a bad deal, huh? I ended up having the pasta while waiting for the tow truck. But I digress again.

I made it to Virginia!!!

The Virginia Welcome Centre is not RV friendly as there is only car-sized parking and no pull-thrus. I couldn’t have done this with the toad attached!

I had to back out of that parking stall!

Nice-looking welcome centre:

I stocked up on a ton of tourist information material.

Then I drove through some more beautiful scenery marred only by a dirty windshield:

Approaching Richmond, I was due for a break, so I turned off the interstate to go to a ‘tourist information centre’ that I never succeeded in finding. That put me on a lovely rural route that paralleled I-64 for about five miles before merging back onto it.

A wave of emotion hit when I reached the I-64/I-95 junction and hit familiar territory. I’d only been that way once before, but there were a few familiar landmarks; a building, the city names on the exits, the stench of tobacco at the Philip Morris plant.

The last bit of my journey was on back roads and I looked forward to pulling over just shy of my destination for a bite to eat and to text my friend to let her know I was incoming. Well, we all know what happened there.

April 28, 2012 by Rae

Into Kentucky

I am parked at the Cracker Barrel in Shelbyville, Kentucky, and looking forward to the parking lot clearing out so I can get myself on some levelers!

Part of the trouble with figuring out tonight’s overnight spot was that Google Maps kept routing me out off of I64 and around Louisville. I did some research and learned that the Sherman Minton Bridge, which connects I64 in Indiana to I64 in Kentucky at the western edge of Louisville, was shut down due to maintenance concerns for several months. Even though the bridge has now been reopened for two months and Google knows this, it has failed to update its mapping application. Once I knew that I could stay on I64 through Louisville, it completely changed how far I felt I could get today. None of the Louisville overnighting options were on I64. It made sense to get clear of the city and then pull over. Shelbyville had a number of options, with the Cracker Barrel the only sure bet.

Cracker Barrel is a restaurant I have mixed feelings about. I love their food, but it is so unhealthy that I feel guilty when I eat there. But tonight I had a good reason to do so and I savoured every bite, including their OMG crustless coconut cream pie (which is actually a toasted coconut custard).

But let me go back to the beginning of the day. I didn’t want to get to the Cracker Barrel too early, hoping to miss the dinner crowd (that plan failed), so I had a slow mo morning in St Louis and pulled out at 10:30, with my ETA being 6PM. Huh? Oh, I was going to cross into EST today!

Miranda at Harrah’s St Louis

I did a double take when I saw this rig pull in last night!

Getting through St Louis this morning was much easier than it was at rush hour on Thursday. I was glad to be going eastbound because check out the westbound lanes:

Shortly after crossing the Mississippi into Illinois, I got off the freeway to get fuel and have visual evidence of why I loathe getting gas in the motorhome with the car attached. Why do some fuel stations have those stupid useless cement bollards at each end? Let’s just say I miscalculated my turns. A good Samaritan tried to warn me, but I saw this happening in the mirror and knew I couldn’t stop it:

I drove another 100km to the Goshen Road rest area for lunch:

Goshen Road Rest Area

After lunch, I put a capful of Turtle Wax car detergent into a bucket and diluted it with a couple of cups of water. Armed with a soft green scrubby pad, I spent at most 15 minutes vigourously scrubbing away the remnants of the bollard’s attack on my car:

There’s still a very faint line on the door and one by the wheel well, but you have to know they’re there. I’m glad that my cursory assessment at the gas station was correct; I just scrapped the paint off the bollard but didn’t do any real damage to the car. You can all start breathing again. 😉

Now, I’m going to say something that is going to leave some of you in disbelief and assured that I am a couple of cards short of a deck: the east smells different from the west. I really noticed it at the Goshen Road rest area; there was this humid scent of humus that I haven’t smelled for years. It could be that the vegetation is different.

I drove some more and crossed into Indiana:

My only experience in Indiana was at a really horrible rest area. The welcome centre on today’s route was much nicer:

I found this map interesting. I drove on the northwestmost red line on this map and was traveling on the southwestmost red line:

The Indiana welcome centre had information about the Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial. I think he looks very handsome without his beard:

Lincoln is an historical figure who feels very real to me, not legendary. I think it’s because I saw the place where he died. There was a pillow on the bed that was supposedly stained by his blood. I don’t know for sure if that was real or not, but it made an impact on me.

Lincoln’s mother died of something I’d never heard of:

The NPS has a very informational page about milksickness.

The overpasses in Indiana, like those in Michigan, are painted sky blue:

About 10 miles from Louisville, it became imperative that I stop to use the bathroom and I only had a quarter tank of fuel left. So I pulled off the highway at an exit where there were several gas stations. I found one that I could easily pull into, but the roof looked low. I was very happy that they bothered to post the clearance level. It was 13′, which gave me a foot and a half to spare. 🙂

I crossed the Kentucky state line on the Sherman Milton Bridge and was then formally welcomed into the state:

It says birthplace of Abraham Lincoln, but I think of it as the birthplace of my favourite female singer, Loretta Lynn. 🙂

Driving through Louisville was easy. I stuck to the centre lane when possible. There was almost no traffic and no one honked at me!

Louisville, KY

The Kentucky welcome centre is very beautiful!

From there, it was only about 10 minutes to Shelbyville. My GPS thought the Cracker Barrel was almost a full kilometre past where it is, so I missed it. I was very glad that just a couple of kilometres down KY-56 there was a small shopping centre into which I could pull in and turn around. I saw the Cracker Barrel on the way back, but was confused by the sign that said that RV parking was thataway, leading me to think that there was another entrance. Thankfully, the next entrance was a U-shaped one, so I was able to get turned around again and finally manoeuvre myself through the Cracker Barrel maze into one of their three RV slots.

This was the first night since I left Lethbridge that I arrived absolutely exhausted so I was glad to have an excuse to have supper made for me, and even gladder that the manager was so quick to say that I could stay.

The sky has been rumbling for the last hour and it has finally started to pour. It is also very dark out even though it is just 8:30EST. I will be getting to bed early tonight so that I can pull out reasonably early tomorrow. I have a fairly short driving day planned, so I’m hoping to get to a rest area fairly early on where I can spend part of the day and catch up on some things.

April 27, 2012 by Rae

Exploring St Charles, Missouri (and the Lewis and Clark Boat House and Nature Center)

Today, I took reader Gina’s advice and drove all the way to historic St Charles, Mo, to visit the historic downtown section as well as the Lewis and Clark Boat House and Nature Center.

‘All the way’ is about 3 miles from where Miranda is parked, at the Harrah’s Casino. 😀

It was cold in the rig today and it promised to be grey and miserable all day, so I decided that since I was up I might as well get an early start and have breakfast in St Charles before going to the museum, which opened at 10. It was only 9:30 when I was done, so I went over to Walmart, also in St Charles, to get a few things and discovered a gigantic Dollar Tree store next door. I have never seen one so big, and it was full of brand name products! The cashier teased me when I told her that ‘all those bags’ couldn’t all be mine, saying that she was watching me toss stuff in my basket like I was touring Ali Baba’s cave! Everything was on the list, however, and I barely had to get anything at Walmart.

I then drove to the historic downtown portion of St Charles, a formerly French-Canadian city that was the last bastion of civilization for the Lewis and Clark expedition. There is tons of free parking down near the boat house, just a block from the southern portion of Main Street.

I read the Lewis and Clark journals about 15 years ago, but I think they would make a bigger impression on me today, so I have downloaded the free Kindle version (readable on my iPad and iPod Touch using the Kindle app) and am looking forward to rereading about their journey now that I have pretty much covered their whole route to the Pacific Ocean.

The museum is small with entry costing $4. This includes a really good National Geographic movie about the expedition that had me glued to the edge of my seat!

After the museum, I walked up to Main Street and walked it from the southern to the northern end and back again, visiting a few shops and checking out the restaurant menus. The Little Hills Winery menu was particularly appealing and quite inexpensive, so I went in, but lunch was rather disappointing. The ciabatta bun was stale and the McCain-type seasoned wedge fries were tepid. The sandwich filling, however, was incredibly delicious and is one I would like to recreate at home! There was a moist and flavourful charbroiled chicken breast topped with thin slices of creamy Brie, two strips of crispy bacon, and a delicious apple and onion chutney, definitely worth the price of lunch.

I got an ice cream for the walk back to the car, made briskly as the sky was starting to spit. It’s now very windy and threatening to storm.

Check out the gallery for more information about my day.

this was a crazy intersection; I had no idea where to go and was so glad I could follow this car!

the Lewis and Clark Boat House and Nature Center

close up of the sign

Mention of St Charles by Clark

Portraits of Lewis and Clark (did you know that William Clark was a flaming red head?)

about Lewis

about Clark

mention of how well managed was the expedition and that only one man died

representation of a stone house at the time

the museum

this razor may have belonged to Lewis

list of articles, including the Lewis’ razor

a page from the Lewis geneology

description of Floyd, the man who died (probably of a ruptured appendix)

“I have been wet and cold in every part as I ever was in my life”–Clark

a little bit about their Shoshone guide, Sacagawea, the wife of a French-Canadian interpreter

about Sacawagaea’s son, the final member of the expedition

About the expedition’s triumphant return to St Charles. The men had been gone for 28 months and were presumed dead.

An hilarious story about a French Canadian interpreter with such poor eyesight that he mistook Lewis for an elk and shot him in the rear!

representation of this man, Pierre Cruzatte

I loved this statue of Lewis and Clark; it seems to capture their spirit

Reproduction of the type of clothes the French Canadian men would have worn (Lewis and Clark’s soldiers all wore military attire. When that was worn through, they made neat leather suits. The image of a roughly dressed expedition party is fictional.)