My adventure starts on a Friday afternoon after a very long week at work.  I started this little adventure with a simple plan:  get to Covington, Virginia to attend the Flying Circus sUAS event.  Basically if you don’t know what that is, it’s an event where people fly drones, race RC cars and have a general good time enjoying a shared interest.  I left Lynchburg around 6:30 or so and arrived into town about 9 ish.  I hadn’t made any reservation since I figured.. “it’s Covington, it’s not exactly a popular vacation spot”.  Too bad too since it truly is a very beautiful town!  I called a local hotel and asked if they had any rooms available.  It was the only hotel.. err make that Motel with a 5 star rating.  Granted, that was from just one person.  The little Indian woman on the other end of the phone confirmed that she had plenty of available so without delay I scooted on over to the most quaint little motel in town.

This was my destination for the night.  A small motel in the middle of town with only one other guest (at least guest with a car).  Was I worried?!  Was I scared for my safety?!  Was I frightening of small critters?!!  NO!  This was my bed for the night and I said, as long as there aren’t things crawling around when I open the door and turn on the lights, then everything will be OK!  Much to my surprise… they it was a very clean room!  The mattresses were very new looking and everything was as well kept as possible for a little cheap motel in the mountains.  Was there a TV?  Yup!  Was there a bathroom and running water?  Yes, sir!  AC?  Check!  

Okay.. sure.. I did put a chair in front of the door and slept with my gun on the night stand, but in the end, it was Covington, Virginia.  I don’t think they have too many problems with gangs.  I was awoken in the middle of the night to flashing police lights outside my window, but I figured as long as I wasn’t the one being held hostage, who was I to interfere?

I awoke to see that the night had past with no violent murders or sexual assaults, so I counted my lucky stars and decided to get ready to attend the aerial events of the day.  I had to motivate myself to fully wake up since somehow I got a sudden addiction to old re-runs of Rosanne, but with a little bit of encouragement I was able to leave the hotel room and make my way to my final destination.  I won’t go into a whole bunch of detail on the Flying Circus event, since this blog isn’t about reviewing things, it’s just about my adventures.  Needless to say I had a very fun time and if you really want to see the photos that I took of the event, head over to here and click away.  I ran into several people I knew there and watch many a person crash and burn.  We did have a rather large down pour, but that only improved the RC track for people who wanted to take their vehicles in the mud.  I was able to get a bunch of really cool photos of that!  I was even able to make them look like real cars going through the mud!  This photo is a great example of that!

Once I was done for the day (or rather pretty much rained out of the day), I decided to engage the trusty GPS on my Prius.  Little did I know that my Prius was plotting to get me lost in the back woods of Virginia.  Now normally I would have enjoyed the diversion, but I kind of wanted to get home at a decent hour and with as little motion sickness as humanly possible.  My Toyota had other plans that involved taking me through windy passes and one lane roads.  Now I will say this… it was the most beautiful parts of the country I have ever seen and yes, I will probably take that way again when it’s not pouring down rain and I’m not in a hurry.  I mean, seriously!  I saw waterfalls, horses drinking from streams and Norman Rockwell type towns that I didn’t know still existed.

I will say that towards the end of the trip I gave the GPS the finger and plotted my own way home which put me on a local highway.  I guess next time I’ll have to supervise my GPS and make sure that it’s idea of the “quickest way” home is accurate.  All in all though, it was a great trip and a super fun get away from own private world.  Sometimes it’s really what you need to clear your head and the mountains of Virginia / West Virginia give the rest of the country a run for its money in the beauty department.