A Year (and a Half) in Photos, Part Four

<— More photos that-a-way!

Back in September, Chris and I planned a week long road trip, and the end goal was DragonCon, an annual fantasy/sci-fi convention held in Atlanta, GA.  Yes, it’s a big geek fest, but oh, so fun!  Along the way, we made pit stops in Kentucky  to see Tammy and Jeremy, Nashville so Chris could see my old stomping grounds, and Dalton to visit with my Mom and her husband, John.  We also made a couple of detours, the most notable being through the mining mountains of West Virginia.  Specifically, Boone County.  That’s right folks.  We found the home of the infamous Jesco White, and we even stopped in some dive bars in the area to talk to the locals about the White family rebels.  If you have no idea what I’m talking about right now, you should watch the documentary The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia. It’s worth it.  Trust me.

Oh, and we will be attending DragonCon again this year (it’s always over Labor Day weekend), so if any of you Hotlantians will be there, let me know!

On to the photos!

So, we decided that if we saw anything cool/unusual along our journey, that we would stop and document it.  Yeah, we came across this only an  hour into our drive.

Of course, I thought it would be appropriate to hump its leg.

Our next stop was to Luray Caverns, where we spent the next hour underground.  I had my DSLR with me, and was actually able to get some pretty decent shots even in the low light.

‘The Shaggy Dog.’

The Stalacpipe Organ.  You should read about it.  It was fascinating to watch and hear it work.

The wishing well at the end of the tour. Once a year, the money collected from the well is collected and donated to charity.

The decisions to drive through Boone County was a very last minute one, as Boone County was quite out of our way.  It’s added several extra hours to our trip, but it was worth it.

We got to drive thru the interesting mining towns up in the mountains, where mining carts were rolling on tracks just above us and diving into the ground just next to the road.  Neither of us had ever seen anything like it.

Madison, WV.  Pretty sure this the building where Jesco lives.

Door to one of the bars we stopped in.

Chris felt it necessary to owl at the courthouse where Kirk had her baby taken away for snorting drugs off the nightstand in her hospital room a day after delivering the kid.

The next day, we got back on our scheduled route to Kentucky.  And we stumbled upon this.  Yes, that’s right.  A castle.  In the middle of nowhere in Kentucky.

The place is called Castle Post.  Story goes that a man was building it for his wife, but she left him before he finished it.  Eventually, William Shatner bought the place, later sold it, and now it’s a resort hotel.  Or something.
 

Finally made it to Tammy’s!

Cooking dinner at Tam’s.

I’m still not sure why we thought this was such a good idea.

Owling at Tammy’s horse farm.  He was going to try to owl the horse, but we were afraid he would die.

Sure we’ll fit!  And yes, I am wearing a shirt that says, ‘If you lick it, they will come.’

Mid-air planking.  I didn’t Photoshop him in.  I Photoshopped the trampoline out.

Tammy keeps her mistletoe up year round, which I think is awesome.

We finally made it!

Chris and me just after the Buffy Horror Picture Show with live shadow cast.  Of course, you know that I was in heaven.  The best part is that they perform my absolute most favorite episode — Once More with Feeling!

It was followed immediately with the Dr. Horrible Picture Show.

The next day we participated in my first LARP (live action role playing).  We played incestuous siblings from 1981, hence the PacMan shirt and side ponytail.

And that night, we went goth.

Chris’s friends asked him why he was dressed as a gay cowboy.  Ha… I giggled at that.

And yes, Chris and I are wearing the same exact vest.  The funny part is that we didn’t buy those together.  It just ended up that way.

An awesome steampunk band that plays DragonCon every year, Abney Park.

Funny story… Chris and I were making out at a drum circle (no, really), and I felt something smack me in the back of the head.  I shrugged it off, and we went back to our face sucking, and then something landed in my lap.  Yeah, someone was throwing condoms at us.  We never did figure out where they were coming from.

This Ron Jeremy look-a-like asked if he could take a picture with me and my fantastic boobs.  How could I say no to that?

Of course, there were tons of costumes at this event.

Tons of them.

Overheard: "Do you think those are real?"

The next morning, we required a little hair of the dog.  Build your own Bloody Mary Bar at Front Page News!

And it was so worth it.

His shirt cracks me up.
 

I have literally hundreds of photos from the DragonCon parade, as well, but I won’t bore you with those.  I had hoped to get a lot more photos than I did of the actual convention, but I was too busy playing board games, larping, and learning about costume design and creation.  Maybe next year!

More photos to come!

Cheers,
Felina