oh, look who showed up!

I thought doing The Scintilla Project would give me all sorts of motivation for writing EVERY SINGLE DAY!!!! Ummmm….. no. I did enjoy it immensely, though, and was really glad I got as far as I did with it. I think I missed the last two prompts, but no big deal. I appreciated all the comments even more immensely. What it did do was make me realize how much I miss serious (well, kind of serious) writing. And how I actually CAN sit down and do it daily. Even if I don’t. 

So. Glad I did it. It was a worthwhile project. I seem to be full of projects lately. Baker B and I are on vacation — I took off Thursday and Friday and the campus is closed Monday and Tuesday for Easter, so it’s an amazingly LOOOONG vacation. We were going to go somewhere, but he talked me into waiting till June to go to Charleston. Which is okay- the weather has been so ridiculously nice here that it’s actually been just like spring for a month- so for once I don’t feel like I will completely lose my mind if I don’t get out of here and go somewhere with normal April weather.  WE have normal April weather!! Well, okay, we have normal April weather for people in the Piedmont and down at the coast. We have bizarre weather for the mountains. Thank you, Climate Change! We’ve had flowers blooming like mad for a month now. And no freezes to kill everything, which is what ordinarily happens if we do have an early spring. Not yet, anyhow. It’s getting late enough that I’m seriously starting to hope we are actually out of danger. Although I’m still not planting anything yet. 

Anyhow, that’s nothing to do with all my many projects, except that instead of going somewhere for a few days, we just took a day trip yesterday and are taking another one tomorrow. We’d thought about going to West Virginia, maybe back to Williamson, which is an old weird town (like anything in West Va is NOT old and weird) where we’ve stayed overnight a couple of times. There’s a hotel that used to be quite inexpensive, and has big nice rooms (I think at one time it was a fancier hotel than it is now) – rooms with fantastic views over the old town and the hills around it. The first time we stayed there it was very cheap — but now the rooms are $90. Which is crazy. It was kind of pricey last time too – I remember thinking we could have stayed at our Mount Pleasant Red Roof Inn in Charleston for a few dollars more – but $90 is WAY too much for a motel in Coal Country. So, nixed that. And it seems like we’ve been to most of our West Va/Va haunts pretty recently. So we decided we’d take our annual redbud trip and just go drive around Abingdon, which is only an hour from here. However, thanks to the very early spring, Abingdon’s redbuds are pretty much gone already. Our redbuds are blooming, which should have clued us in. Usually, though, we do our redbud trip around the middle of April, and they are not always coming out then. 

We ended up going to Bristol. Which is either Virginia or Tennessee. The state line goes right through downtown. Which, yeah, is a little odd. Bristol is only ten miles or so beyond Abingdon and is a much bigger town, but for some reason we never go there.We don’t even think about, despite going to Abingdon pretty often. Abingdon is more historical. Bristol is mostly known for the NASCAR Speedway. Well, apparently Brisol Tennessee is known for the speedway. And country music. Bristol Virginia doesn’t seem to even mention the speedway on their webiste. 

It’s late, of course – why would I start this with enough time to do it justice before I have to go to bed??? We are going back again tomorrow, amusingly enough, so I need to get up at a reasonable hour. Baker B is suddenly obsessed with a number of old signs and a golf course and a weird lake with a square island and a stream that just vanishes, so he wants to go do some investigating. I also love the old signs so want some more pictures. I will post some pictures from yesterday, and with all the back story out of the way, perhaps my next entry can focus more on what’s behind all these obsessions. If I can actually manage to make another entry before this is all old news. 

This is the lake with the square island. Which isn’t quite square on Google Maps, says Baker B, but it certainly looks square:

The lake bed was quite strange. And shallow. And clear. 

And reflective. 

Downtown Bristol has lots of old neat buildings. 

One of which displayed Girliest Jesus Ever for Easter:

And there’s a really odd sign over the highway downtown. Which is very hard to read from the front.

It says "A good place to live". There’s a ringing endorsement for you! "Bristol VA/ TN. It’s okay!" 

And apparently they weren’t expecting anyone to be coming into town from the other direction:

Since you are actually looking at the town from this direction, it seems like it would make more sense to have it facing you as you approach town. But hey, what do I know about town planning?? There was quite the strange theme of backwards signs on this trip. I’ll get to that next time. There was also a very nifty cemetery, which I will also get to next time. And I will one day catch up on reading and noting. Hahahahaha!