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Charlottesville, Virginia
Sometimes I swear it feels like I don’t belong anywhere
The 2023 Weekend Trips slideshow starts on a weekend in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. I was there for a reason (to attend my niece’s college graduation) and decided to go the long way. Instead of driving the entire way, I took a late afternoon Acela to DC, then after ah overnight stay, took a yellow line train to DCA and drove the last few hours from there. I would have saved time just driving the whole way, but having done that before, I thought a shakeup would be better. The direct driving route follows I-78 and I-81, two unpleasant highways with limited lanes, a lot of slow inconsiderate trucks and a lot of fast reckless drivers pissed at those slow inconsiderate trucks always in the way.
This picture is from the highway (a scenic rest stop actually) off I-64 (a big improvement over I-78 and I-81) on the big climb east out of Staunton.
An additional draw of my convoluted take a train and rent a car plan was that it afforded a stopover or two, most noticeable here at Monticello, the home of president Thomas Jefferson, the only architect (so far) who served as US President.
By the time I hatched my convoluted take a train and rent a car plan, it was already too late to get a tour inside the house at Monticello, that privilege was already taken away by large amount of middle school student tour groups, none of who appeared to actually even be interested in where they were. But even though I was out in the cold as far as the house tours were concerned, I was not completely out of luck. They still had garden passes, where I could do anything I wanted to, as long as I didn’t go inside.
Monticello is kind of in Charlottesville, but real Charlottesville is still a drive away. Once there, the thing you have to see is the University of Virginia, especially the original campus designed by Jefferson.
The UVA campus kind of feels like a giant, almost urban Monticello, which I say as a compliment. There are wonderful moments scattered all about the place, the siting (like at Monticello) is absolutely first rate and even though the buildings are really old, they somehow don’t feel that way. It’s a shame that Jefferson didn’t build more buildings, but I guess being president probably got in the way of things.
In 2023, I took more driving trips than I have in decades. Not only did I drive around Virginia in a rental car, but I also did three car round trips to DC as well as this surprise, almost last minute one up to Syracuse.
Why would any sane person want to drive to Syracuse? There were two reasons, but the first and main one is to see a koala. My recently graduated niece has been obsessed with the small sleepy gray creatures for her entire life, and a week before we happened to drive by a billboard that advertised koalas appearing now at a zoo in Syracuse. They were there for a limited time only and almost heading back home to the San Diego Zoo and, once finding out they were there and we could see them, there was no way we were going to miss them.
The koalas were on display at the Rosamund Gifford Zoo, a quite nice small zoo that also featured a pair of twin baby elephants, who were super rare and super adorable, even if they literally spent the entire time playfully fighting over a stick.
Our koala quest coincidentally coincided with the New York State Fair in Syracuse, a big state fair for a big state. There was a lot to see here, once could even safely say that there was actually just too much to see in a one day visit, let alone the half day that we planned. We hit as many of the highlights as we could without burning out, some of which are presented below without any further explanation.
