Leaving party and Sangria

It's a little early as I am not leaving for another month but a lot of people are going away in July. So Saturday night Debbie throw me a little party at her beautiful house. It was mainly my friends from the wine club and a few from Uni. It was the usual, bring food and wine and drinks will be supplied.

My food contribution - balsamic strawberry and goat cheese nibbles.

 Debbie even got me an amazing GF cake from Bollo's. It was so good.

My pretty (and tasting) cake

 And Jan spelled my name out in peppers on the salad.

Me

We got some lovely group photos too as I don't have many of the group.

Cait, Jan Me, Betty and Debbie

Walt, Richard, me, Bob and David

The wine club

With David 

Debbie and the amazing food display

Cutting the cake.

And nearly everyone went home with some of Richard's fractal pictures, which are seriously cool. Here are mine.

fractals

More fractals.

It was a lovely night, very relaxed and a lot of fun. Blacksburg hasn't been the kindest to me overall, but I have been amazing luckily and blessed to have known such a lovely group of people. :-) So definitely not all bad.

On Sunday evening, I went with Debbie to a Sangria workshop at Zeppolli's. It was fun even if some of the concoctions were not so good. I did like the one with jalapeños which was different but had some heat to it.

Make your own

Stephanie had made a bunch of pitchers which were very tasting and we got glasses to make our own. Mine just tasted like fruit juice, so were very nice, but I imagine very easy to get very drunk on.

My concoctions.

And it was not as easy as you would think. One of Debbie's, which sounded like it should work, really didn't. They looked very pretty though.

More colorful concoctions.

It was a lot of fun and put me in the mood for Tenerife as I can now officially say I have accepted a job there. It's only until December I think but still. Ready for Island living!

Summer Solstice 2015

Sadly I spent most of last week home sick, thanks to that large bug bite, which just got worse. And my body really hates it when I take antihistamines. When awake, which wasn't often, I couldn't even walk in a straight line while holding onto the wall. Thankfully by Friday I was feeling better and could stop the drugs. And I now do not leave the apartment with being covered in bug repellant! I haven't put pictures of the bite up because frankly it was gross! (And never google pictures of bug bites especially when you have one - it will freak you out.)

Saturday was another of Blacksburgs Summer festival. Last weekend was the Summer Solstice Festival. After checking the weather forecast, I went early, as it opened. It seems everyone else had the same idea. We are having a lot of thunderstorms at the moment, thanks to the high temperatures. I don't mind the storms. Some are very dramatic and they usually come and go quickly, refreshing things. Not so keen when caught out in one though, which has happened a few times. Soaked in seconds.

Anyway, the weather was good for the first part. The festival is great if you have kids; if not, it's nice to be outside. They have a lot of different stalls and displays.

Karate demo. 

I want to play 

Elsa.

I caught the part of flea circus again.

Starting soon

Showing me Paddy, the flea.

I didn't stay for the whole thing as I couldn't see much. Anyway I have seen it before.
They also had a petting zoo, which was free last time. This time you had to pay. So no thanks.

Llama

 They even had a Blacksburg Hackers group

Hackers 

Tech

 Like I said there are tones of things for kids.

arts and crafts art.

Water balloon fighting 

Marshmallow launchers

 The area for adults was near the stage and you could get drinks. But I decided at $5 a glass of mediocre wine to go for the cheaper lemonade instead.

Steel drum band

 I took a closer look at Black House as well. They have been renovating for a while and I haven't had a chance to check it out. It looks great.

Black House and Cultural Centre

 I only stuck around for an hour before checking out the Saturday market (and getting a great deal on fresh greens) and heading home. It was perfect timing as I was just getting home when the rain started. Later I saw Jurassic World and had dinner with a friend. If you haven't seen the movie, the dinosaurs are great. But be prepared for some of the more stupid scenes. And the characters in the original are 100 times better.

Today was my last time at RAD class. :-(

last RAD class

In the photo, I am hiding to the right of the Hokie bird, thankfully a little blurry - it was a tough work out and I look like it! I am already aching. Tomorrow... ouch!

 I think RAD may be the thing I miss most about leaving Blacksburg. I have loved taking the classes and helping out where I can. And the instructors are just simply awesome!!!!!! I wish I could stay in the States and take the course to become an instructor myself. Maybe sometime. 

VT Cheese Festival

One of the best things about Blacksburg in the summer is the number of festivals. There seems to be one pretty much every weekend. This weekend was the first Virginia Tech Cheese Festival. Thankfully it was held indoors at the Moss Art's Centre as the weather this week has really heated up - 90 F with ~80-90% humidity (I wish I was joking about the humidity level). I have been working from home as much as possible as my office is generally in the summer 10-20 F hotter than outside and like a sauna.
I decided to go to this one on my own as it was easy than trying to organize people so I got the bus down there.

Outside the Arts Center

With the ticket, you get a free drink. Someone warned me that I should get a drink first as the queues inside were long and it would be more pleasant with a glass of wine. You don't have to tell me twice. So I grabbed a glass of Riesling and a bottle of Sprite (which turned out to be an excellent decision). Unfortunately the lady was right about the queues and the wine didn't make it to the first tasting!

Cheese

My favorite (they even gave me extra free cheese later!)

 Overall it was not very well organized. They had about 15 vendors split over 3 floors. But each floor only had one queue, so you had to wait in that one queue to try any of them. Even if you didn't want to try some. And they only had 2 drinks vendors, both on the ground floor. Hence why I was very happy to have the extra drink. If you are in a group, you can send someone on a drink run, but I would have lost my space in line and have to start again. Not going to happen.

Very long queues.

Also a lot had bread or crackers with the cheese on, which makes sense. But for someone who can't eat wheat, it sucked!

Looks good

 At least VT can make fun of itself. That the only explanation I have for the amount of cheese related merchandise.

Cheese everything

Cheese hat anyone?

 The Moss Arts Centre is very nice and though I was standing in line for a long time, the view was pretty good at times. And, when not so pretty I had my book. That is when not eavesdropping on the sometimes bizarre conversations around me.

Cathedral style windows

They also had live music outside which was good (though they must have been melting), but as everyone was inside and couldn't hear it, I was a little confused as to why.

Music

 And they had a little petting zoo. Well, some cows and sheep. The calves were so cute. :-)

Chilling in the sun

So cute.

teenagers!

On the way home, I stopped by the UPS store to buy boxes. I am starting to organize my packing. However it was not fun getting them home on the bus!
On the evening, I cooked dinner (the cheese and broccoli bakes sort of worked) with a cheese platter of my recent acquisitions for dessert.

Gouda, Fetina and cubes of horseradish cheese.

Sadly I was woken up in the middle of the night by a bug bite on my leg. It didn't seem bad during the day. Now it is roughly the size of my palm. :-( And the itching is driving me crazy!!!!

 On Sunday I attempt to sell some of my clothes at a consignment store. Apparently my style is too old. Very insulted. But they only want clothes for teens and considering the clothes they had, I think I should be happy to say I don't have any of those. But I did have a nice meal at a friends house on his deck to end the day, so not a complete loss.

Last Virginia wine festival

Saturday I dragged Steve to the Virginia Tech Wine Festival as he missed Fork & Cork. It was a lot smaller but that was a good thing in some ways. The queues were a lot smaller and though there were less vineyards, we did manage to try all of them. Though there were a couple we could happily have missed.

As part of the ticket, you get a free wine glass which were very cool.

Cool glasses

We both agreed our favorite was Stanburn winery. Some of the others ... well Virginia wines can be quite hit and miss.

waiting

 The weather for the past week hasn't been the best with lots of rather dramatic thunder storms. The one on Friday afternoon was so loud and dramatic managed to make me scream and jump out of my seat in surprise. All week I have been keeping an eye on the weather for today as the festival was outside.

Oh oh.

 At one point I though we were going to get rained on but thankfully it missed up and cleared up. It was pretty hot standing in the sun and I was thankful I had remembered sunscreen.

clearing up 

Happy/drunk 

our final tasting

 After the tastings and some spicy thai pork and rice, we chilled out in the sun for a bit. We debated splitting a bottle but 7 tastings (of 6-8 wines each) works out as quite a bit of wine.

Chilling

 So we headed back to mine via Kroger and grabbed some antipasto to enjoy with a final glass at mine.

Antipasto snack

The rest of the weekend was the usual work. Though this did include finishing up one of my assessments on the balcony - I wish I could say in the sun but Blacksburg weather is not cooperating!  (I am doing an online course which along with the work I am paid to do, is taking up a lot of my time but I am really enjoying it.)

I am also starting to process of sorting through my things and figuring out what to sell, ship, or just bin. It is amazing how much stuff you end up with after 2.5 years, and I only have a limited amount I can ship. :-/

West Virginia

I ended up getting up earlier than I wanted Sunday morning (thanks to very thin curtains and a 5.30am dawn) and I was not happy about it. The amount of wine the night before didn't help. And my legs hurt. A lot.

After breakfast at the hotel, I started the drive to Blackwater creek falls in West Virginia. I wanted to see the falls as I have seen so many amazing photos of it. The drive was longer than I expected (~2.5 hrs) so I amused myself by singing to the radio (well iPod), often in funny voices. Because I could!

The drive all day Sunday was interesting. My GPS/SatNav had a mood on and took me some interesting routes. Lots of sharp 180 degree turns, usually after the rise of a hill to keep you on your toes. I think I scared the shell off a tortoise out on his Sunday morning constitutional. He was in the middle of the road thankfully so I managed to passed over him without harming him. (I might have been imagining the "WTF?" look on his face but I doubt it.) I saw very few cars for most of the trip which was a good job as I have no idea how 2 cars would pass on those roads. Someone would have to reverse for quite some distance.

I don't think I killed anything on the trip! :-) Bar some bugs and a few butterflies. Though it was a close called with the baby bunny. Luckily he/she ran the other way.

The weather was not as nice on Sunday. Another factor making the drive more interesting. When you can't see in front of you, no matter how fast the wipers are going, there are random detours, and in one case a jeep reversing towards me on the highway (thankfully in a detoured area so I was going slow enough), well, all in all, I was happy to get there.

Bug!

The main waterfall is at the end of a short set of stairs (though given how badly my legs hurt, they didn't feel very short at the time).

Nearly there. 

Blackwater Creek falls

View from the lowest viewing platform

Other side of the creek

I have to say it looked nothing like the photos I have seen but I think they were from creek level, which the average person can't get down too.
Of course there were lots of people taking selfies. So I thought I would give it a shot. (Don't know why I bother!)

Best Selfie attempt

The original plan was to do a few walks in the area but my legs hurt too much and the weather was not good, with frequent and heavy showers in between sun. However I did find a short 0.25 mi trail to Elakala falls and had the place to myself. Sadly the bridge goes across the top of the falls and there isn't really a good place to view it. Still it was nice to sit and relax, listening to the water.

From the bridge above Elakala falls

water

I did hike a bit around the trail and found an ok view. But the ground was soaked and it looked like they have had a lot of the woodland falling into the creek so I didn't want to go near enough to the edge to get a better photo.

Best view of Elakala falls (without risking death)

After the hike, I ended up at the park lodge, which was empty, for lunch before starting the drive back.

Last view in the park

After about an hour, I decided to break up the drive and as I was only likely to be out here this once, go to the Green Bank National Radio Observatory. Thankfully it wasn't too far out of the way. And stayed open late. They had a small display section which I wondered around until the tour started.

In Infra-red

Heat hand print

Radnom galaxy art

I wish all mirrors made me look like this!

 The tour consisted of a video and short talk. There were a couple of others which was good as I didn't have any questions to ask. Then we went to see the telescopes. They have about 8. You can only take photos outside the limits, but the bus did drive around all the telescopes. They were a lot bigger than I expected (given that it is West Virginia).

The main Green Bank Telescope

After finding my lost car keys (one of those days) and getting a very large coffee, I headed home. At this point, the GPS/SatNav decided it wanted me dead.
I couldn't convince it to take me on the interstate (a fact I only realized when I had no clue where exactly I was so at its mercy). Instead it was small country roads all the way. Which was fine. Until the County Highway. I was happy to hear the name, until I saw the road. It might have been a highway in the 1800s but little had changed since then. Think: gravel and mud road (using the name road loosely), 180 degree bends often up or down hill on 45 degree slopes, random cabins with a LOT of "no trespassing" and "Mind the guard dog" signs (I am guessing more than a few meth labs). Oh, and the occasional torrential downpour, making the road even more fun to drive. My back end slide out a few times trying to get up a 180 degree uphill bend. I would have taken photos but I was to busy trying to stay on the road.

So I was a little tense by the time I got home at 8pm. But I lived. And I did say I wanted some adventure. But it might be time to wipe the GPS and start again. (I threatened it which such and it didn't listen so I may have to follow through with the threat.)

Over the 36 hours I was away, I drove over 400 miles. Quite impressive I think for my last Virginia?US road trip! (At least for a while.) :-)