5 guys and a girl, in narnia

Saturday, March 17, 2007

In my quest to visit as many states as possible, this St Patrick's day was spent at West Virginia!! Yea, not quite sure what to see there, but I managed to coax 5 colleagues to go with me. I wasn't even sure if it was a good idea since it was snowing quite heavily on the way.. but we gian3.. and there's only so so so little time left. So we set off.

Quite snowy, at my apartment. We stopped for a macs breakfast after abt 2 hrs' drive, where the 2 hungry drivers [ks and me] wolfed down very yummy mcgriddles. Because the 3 pple in my car, erwin, sebast and me just went clubbing the night before, I actually was suffering from a hangover and was pretty tired. But it would definitely be more tiring to drive at night, so I volunteered to drive more in the morning so that I wouldn't have to drive at night. It was an estimated 5 hours drive so we were supposed to reach at 1+, 2.

The snow was tricky to drive in, but it sure made the scenery very enjoyable.

my poor solara got covered in gross grey mudcicles. on the way, ks suddenly cut right across a huge truck and exited the freeway.. and lousy me of course didn't have enough time to react to it. so me with the non gps car got lost.. it was already noon by then. We had to drive up to Denny's tires [or something like that] to get their address so that ks could come and rescue us. Haha. yah what, go out with no map no nothing, just trust the gps. After a very long wait, we were finally rescued. Whee.

Yes, it was already really late. ks led us to a macdonalds for lunch. Initially i was wondering why macs again.. then i realised that its cos ks still had his cup from the macs breakfast so he could get a free refill. bleah. the 3 indos each bought a double filet o fish meal. as in 2 filet o fish burgers in the meal. not 2 fillets in a burger meal. ever hungry lah, these guys.

we thought we were going to west virginia, so imagine our surprise when we saw 'Maryland' signs. at first i couldn't believe that we were in the state of maryland, i thought maybe it's a city in pennsylvania/west virginia. but turns out that due to the irregular shape of maryland, there's this little slice of maryland that juts out in between pennsylvania and west virginia, and we were going through that. Haha.. we actually had lunch in maryland!

after the lunch i was already feeling very discouraged. we had travelled for so long, it was already like, 1? and we were still far from the seneca rocks where we wanted to go. but the jialat thing about west virginia is that there isn't really anywhere else to go. we checked the gps and nothing much interesting was even near us. the seneca rocks visitors' center closes at 4 and we probably couldn't make it. after some indecisive discussions we still decided to whack and go in the end.

pretty sights along the way..

we stopped by a river along the way to seneca rocks. i jumped at the chance to make a snow angel [ya, at the carpark, haha] since there's no more snow in ohio at that time. also i was tired by then so i made erwin start driving.

the mountainous routes and the snow really added to the difficulty and length of driving. After the longest time, we reached Seneca rocks at 4.30pm. presenting to you...

The Seneca Rock

fantastic stuff, isn't it? totally mindblowingly awesome.

ok, kevin actually believed us when we showed him the above photo. so here's the real seneca rocks lah. well, at least it was pretty so it justified our grueling drive a little.

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i picked up a postcard and my very impt fridge magnet from a shop there. i realised that one of the magnets there in the shape of a map, didn't have 'seneca rocks' but instead it had 'blackwater falls'. maybe that's more famous.

well anyways we drove so much just to see this bloody rock so we had to take lots of photos. LOTS.

we finally decided to leave after visiting their toilets.


driving along..




luckily i opted to drive in the morning. the snow was damn scary.

along the way i saw signs leading to the 'blackwater falls'. since they were on the magnet i decided it should be pretty good so we signaled to ks car to go there on the way back.

we were so so glad that we made that trip. the little park at the blackwater falls was covered with so much snow, and yet it was untouched. it was so quiet and serene, it felt so surreal, we couldn't believe our eyes.

trees with clean fluffy snow piled on branches..





we really wanted to see the falls.. so.. we.. erm.. ventured a little further


down this little stairway





it wasn't that far down, and we were really careful. so glad to have found and experienced this little haven.

on the way up, i decided to take photos of these branches, they are covered in ice! and the leaves, they are so hard and frozen you could snap them into 2. meanwhile i was missed! cos i was right at the back and i totally bochuped their calls while i took my shots haha. Worried puji ran back to look for me.. awww.

monkeys!


too much beauty that i had to convince myself that it was all real.


see toad? i feature myself in my video liao.


satisfied with the beautiful place we found, we continued with our journey home..

it being st patrick's day [no one knows what it's for other than something to do with irish, four leaved clovers, leprechauns, wearing green and drinking lots of (green) beer], we really hoped to experience some st patricks action. so i was pretty excited when i saw an blinking lcd screen advertising a restaurant with green beer! Whee! we were hungry by then, so we popped in to check it out.

I really hate weird colored drinks, like green/blue/orange/red so this green sickly yuengling beer really grossed me out. it was fun and all but i just couldn't get past a sip so i donated the rest of my mug to the guys. We had yummilicious wings shared among us.. one of which was chesapeake sauce wings, which was too salty. but it was overall very satisfying.

After the hearty meal, we looked out of the window and to our horrors, it was snowing like CRAZY. jialat, this time. We were still so far from home and it was already so late. What to do, we had to just set off. There was already a lot of snow piled on our cars, even from that short dinner break. We swiftly brushed it off and left.. poor sebast had to drive, he was so tired and the roads were really very very bad. Very dark, and very very slippery with lots of snow, little visibility as well cos of darkness and snow coming at you. We had to go so slowly, didn't help that the roads were small and we weren't familiar with them.

We finally reached the expressways which are usually cleared of snow.. Whew. Finally could drive a lil faster. After about 2 hours sebast switched with erwin cos he looked so stressed and tired!!

And yes, we did manage to reach home safely. Whew. A kinda crappy trip turned out to be really fantastic, thanks to the crazy amounts of pretty snow, and our adventurous spirit to check out the beautiful falls.