Virginia - Day 27 - Charlottesville

Charlottesville KOA
Wednesday, 27 March 2019

today's route

At first, today seemed like a day that would require massive problem-solving.

I've been finding I have almost no phone access in this campground - only a very weak signal if I go outside, and it disappears if I move a few inches the wrong way.  Makes getting campground reservations and conducting financial business much harder.  I decided this morning I'd need to go into town for this reason alone.

I've been trying for days to decide where to stay for my last few days in Virginia and the first week or so in West Virginia.  The trouble is that I've reached mountains again.  Mountains run all along Virginia's western border, and West Virginia doesn't seem to have any flat land in it at all, based on the maps I've been looking at.  I know it's been a full year since I first drove in this same mountain range in southern Pennsylvania, but that hasn't been long enough for me to forget my terror at 12% grades and DANGER signs at the tops of mountains (where they do no good at all - why they aren't at the bottom is beyond me).

In fact, my fear has nearly paralyzed my decision-making ability and I've been dithering about how far I should expect myself to drive in a day and how remote can a campground be before I'm not willing to stay at it.  But reality says I have to have a place to stay tomorrow night and the 3 nights after that, and that requires making a decision and making some phone calls.

And then this morning when I was doing yet another search online for routes that might not be packed with switchbacks and so forth, my computer froze.  This time it wasn't taken over by scammers.  It just froze.  But I remembered the lessons my brother taught me the last time.  Of course, what he said was turn it off, but that's for scammers apparently because I couldn't turn it off.  Nothing on the screen worked at all.  Pushing the on/off button had no effect.  Pushing other buttons didn't work either.  Nothing for it but that I have to take the battery out again.

Experience is good.  I now know where the battery is - behind 9 tiny screws.  At which point I learned one of the 9 is almost stripped.  And neither of the screwdrivers I have that fit would work.  So, since I couldn't look it up myself, I asked at the office where there's an Ace Hardware (figuring the big box stores wouldn't give me the personal attention I wanted for this problem), and instead the manager asked her husband to come and bring his tools.  It took him almost a half hour to arrive, and the reason turned out to be he had to get 3 little kids dressed and stuffed in the golf cart lookalike.  And he had the same screwdriver I do but showed me how the head on mine is worn, for some reason, which is why it didn't work.  I got the back off, got the battery out, got the battery back in, got the back back on, and sure enough, got my computer back.

Then there's the problem that I'm almost out of cash and Chase bank has no branches in the entire state of Virginia.  Actually, it might have one in Alexandria, or it might just be an ATM.  It's got a bunch of branches in both Maryland and West Virginia, which makes me wonder a lot about banking laws in Virginia.  Anyway, I have to be careful about spending the little cash I have left until I can get to a West Virginia bank.

On the other hand, yesterday I got a package from David and Anna with bills (yuck) and Yea! more Pecan Bread from the Corsicana bakery.  Pecan bread can make all kinds of problems seem solvable.

Before I lost computer access I'd worked out a route for today that I hoped would take me on several errands as well as a brief tour of downtown Charlottesville.  But by the time we left the campground, it was so late in the morning and took longer than I thought to get into town that I ended up going straight to the laundromat I'd located.  Good laundromat but a little odd - they seem to do so much laundry for other people that it's hard to find an empty machine.  But all the machines worked and there was some room to walk the dogs in the back, so it worked out.

And while I was parked there I made reservations for campgrounds for the rest of March, which was a relief to get settled, and took care of some other business I didn't want to do online (banking and so forth).

I was a little north of town, and to get to downtown and the University of Virginia campus tried to stay on regular roads instead of the interstate.  And almost immediately got caught in an enormous traffic jam.  Cars were backed up for as far as I could see and we were inching along, when we were moving at all.  So I ducked over to the interstate, and then left it when I found an exit for town.  But that didn't put me on a road I knew so I just drove in the general direction until it started to make sense. 

And that's when I suddenly found myself driving by the Rotunda at UVA, which I'd wanted to see but thought I wouldn't be able to get to.

This is an online photo - traffic was still thick where I was and I couldn't stop anywhere.  Jefferson designed it and supervised its construction through his telescope at Monticello.  (Remember I said Monticello is on top of a steep hill?)

Town wasn't laid out quite like I'd thought, but I managed to find the right roads with no problem and took care of some more errands before heading back to the campground.  So despite morning frustrations, I ended up having a productive day.  We got back to the campground in time for the dogs to have some more lie-outside-in-the-sun time.