1550.6 miles

Earlier this summer I arrived at C's house after school one night and announced that I wanted to go on a road trip. We easily settled on Labor Day as the weekend for our adventure and just as easily picked our route once we thought about it.

Day 1
We departed home around noon Thursday en route for Abingdon, Virginia. No one ever knows where Abingdon is, but I do since I have a friend from there. Look on a map close to Bristol, Tennessee, and you should come close. We arrived in Abingdon a little after 6 p.m., changed clothes, drove "into town" to pick up tickets at will call, then walked down the road for a Yuengling. Good stuff. A few short beers and one awkward conversation with the barkeep later, we walked back up the road to see "The Foreigner" at the Barter Theater, which is a historic (and famous) theater. The play was really well done and very funny. Abingdon is smaller than I'd imagined, but it's in a beautiful part of the country so it can't be all bad.

Day 2
We were up around 8 a.m. Friday and back in the car headed toward Yorktown, Virginia, to visit friends there. (Well, actually, my roommate and her husband and son were there, so we were visiting them.) We had dinner with them and just chilled after the longest scheduled leg of our drive.

Day 3
Day three found us on the road again, headed even farther east. Destination on Day 3: Chincoteague Island, Virginia, on the eastern shore. Once there, I found out how "(in?)famous" one of my travel companions was on the island, visited some family, and tried a veritable buffet of seafood dishes: clams casino, steamed clams, steamed oysters, crab cakes, crab dip, oyster fritters, and a few other dishes I can't recall. Just before sunset we took a boat tour of the island. We made a loop around the outside of the island and only covered 16 miles. Oh, and we spent the day at the beach on Assateague, where, I'm proud to report, I was not the one who got most sunburned. I learned how to body surf -- I am not good at it -- and that C is truly a water baby.

Day 4
We wanted to go to the beach or go kayaking but one of the traveling companions was crispy already so we decided that was a bad idea. What was a good idea though was spending more time with family before hitting the road for our return trip around 2 p.m. We drove until about 2 a.m. on Day 5.

Day 5
We slept until 10 a.m., then got up and finished the 2.5 hours left on the road before we could fall into bed again. I napped once we got back here as I was still recovering from a sinus infection and falling ill to a second infection. C got ready for a business trip. Then I went to urgent care to see the doc about the second infection. Since it looks like C and I are going to be together awhile and I've got no plans to stop traveling, we're going to have to figure out a way to lift this curse he seems to bring upon me when I travel with him. That's two trips with him, and two trips to the ER or urgent care as a result.