This post is a little late, we took a weekend trip on Memorial Day Weekend to go to Virginia Mountain Towns and Cities.
One of our goal is to see America. Each year, we would take a few domestic trip to go see different States. Beside sightseeing, we’d also like to support small local businesses. It’s one of the smallest way that we’re giving back to our great country. Virginia has a lot to offer, we packed tons of activities in two days.
First Day:
Travel and Hiking
Memorial Day is the traditional summer announcement and opening for coastal town. While everybody is at the beach, we were in the mountains all to ourselves. LOL 🙂 We didn’t plan anything, but we wanted to see waterfall and stayed away from the beach scene. So, we kept driving into the Appalachian mountains. It was day time, and the spring flowers are still blooming. The trees are fully leaved again, so it didn’t have the mysterious purple buds like early spring flower, nonetheless, it was still dreamy on the long dwindling route up into the mountain range.
We couldn’t find a bed and breakfast that had an open room in the area. So, we settled for Hampton Inn in Covington, VA. 3-minutes away out of the town, a great 15-miles trail system to waterfall, dam, lakes, and river. We had a great time to just hiking off the stress from our work.
Food selections were limited, everybody in town seems to pointed to this Italian restaurant – Cucci Pizzaria, and oh boy! It was packed. The salad was great! By the time we get to the main course, we were full.
Second Day:
Sightseeing, Museum, Safari Zoo, Deer Feeding and Bird Feeding
Waking up, and I just wanted to get out of town to pick some peach in a different town on a Commercial Orchard. We saw these big big mountains, and Mr.W said he wanted to go there. All of the sudden, we saw a route that seems to take us up in the mountains. There we were taking a 30 miles road straight up into the mountain. We stopped at several waterfalls, and was admiring the engineering work of how to prevent erosion from the mountain on to the road.
The water fall into a small lake, but there are big drainage system that goes under the road, transporting the water into the other side without eroding the road. Amazing to see!
We were semi-hungry, and didn’t want to go back to Charlotteville, so we stopped at the town of Lexington, VA. We had lunch at a Thai restaurant. The town has all of these Victorian houses that were well preserved. We stopped by Lee Washington University.
Mr.W told me the Chapel was very famous, and he didn’t know why. The tour to the Chapel was free, so I asked the tour guide why is it famous. She pointed to the statue, and said it very eloquently and ditching my question. But I got the gist, that underneath the chapel was the tomb of general Robert E. Lee. At that time, I got scared and I walked out. Mr.W didn’t want to tour by himself.
The chapel was beautiful though. Check out the wiki link for yourself.
We stopped by Kroger to get some fruit, the attendant was nice enough to give our fruit a rinse.
We were on our way home when we saw the sign for a Safari Zoo. It’s definitely my favorite kind of zoo. As we can stay in the car, and we get to see the animal up close and personal. This zoo has an extra cool factor as we can buy a huge bucket of food for $4 and the animal would just come to our window. hihi…
The coolest factor is the bird house. You buy this little bird food on the stick. You put it on your shoulder and the colorful birds fly to you. hehhehe… We made so many small videos. Mr.W was super cute when 3 birds were “attacking” him at the same time. They were going for the food, but he was startled by their friendliness.
Let’s talk the numbers:
- Hotel night: $93 (including breakfast)
- Restaurants: $60
- Snack at Kroger: $15
- Gas: $30
- Safari Tickets: $20/person + $4x 3 buckets + Taxes = $60
Total: $228, cost per person: $114
There you have it, a very memorable trip on Memorial Day Weekend – including Spectacular Mountain View, Trail Hiking, Water Fall, Safari Zoo, Bird Feeding, Museum Touring. Virginia is one of the greenest and coolest State to see. And we hope to see more of America. We hope to go and support many more towns to support the small and local business.
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