The Great American Road Trip: Day 124

Distance - 428 miles
Time - 8 hours

Leaving after a long stay is always hard, but Daisy and I magically managed to get up and out of the house just about on-time, rearranging our cars and saying goodbye to Alynn, Aaron, and the elusive Sioux (who crouched in the hallway staring at me for almost 20 seconds! Progress!). It was a pretty cold morning again, but the ice layer on the car had mostly melted the day before, only minimal scraping required.

At the recommendation of Alynn and Desiree, Daisy and I stopped for breakfast on our way out of town at Biscuit Head, mostly because we both are ridiculously fond of biscuits and couldn't resist the name and the promise of a "jelly bar". That's right, instead of a salad bar there's a serve-yourself bar full of jams, jellies, marmalades, fruit butters, flavored honey, and flavored butters! I got the goat cheese grits and a biscuit, then divided each half into quarters so that I could sample as many flavors as possible - I tried the cherry jam, strawberry jam, lime marmalade, sweet potato butter, bananas foster jam, kumquat honey, lemon curd, and one of the butters (I just can't remember the flavor now, I think it might have involved maple?). My favorite was the lime marmalade, and Daisy liked the bananas foster, but all of them were really good, I don't think there weren't any that we wouldn't eat again. :)

Then we drove and drove and drove! North Carolina was a revelation to both of us - we just kept exclaiming about how beautiful the view was, particularly driving through the mountains. I think we were both really grateful for the chance to see them, and to appreciate Asheville and a part of the country we never had really thought about as a place we were going to enjoy so much.

After a few more hours, we made it to eastern Virginia and stopped to see Auntie Joan and Uncle Wayne! I don't actually remember how old I was when I met Joan when she started helping my grandparents as my grandmother's health started to decline, maybe about 10? I was young enough to happily adopt this wonderful woman with her Scottish accent so like my grandmother's as "auntie" and ever since I've only had a growing admiration for the passionate dedication she has to the families that she works with (really, she adopts us too, I think) and her generous heart-warming hugs. It somehow struck me as odd when we pulled up to her house - I'd never been there before. It was wonderful to get to sit and catch up - we got to meet their new husky puppy and even meet two of their grandchildren! They all had evening plans, so after another round of hugs, we chased the dog back inside and were on our way.

Daisy and I drove another 20 minutes or so and dropped in on my Uncle Bruce to say hello. Daisy had a long lost branch of her family living in Virginia Beach (I'll call them her aunt and uncle for simplicity since we never did manage to establish the actual relation) so we soon were back out on the road headed for dinner at a delicious new Greek restaurant called Ammos. The four of us had an amazing meal and were conversing over some wonderful (and huge!) desserts when I noticed a woman in some kind of a costume by the door labelled "Office".

"Oh dear, I hope it's not the belly dancer again, does she look like a belly dancer?" asked Daisy's uncle. Indeed, she was! In an upscale Greek restaurant. If you get there before 8pm, you'll be treated to some incredible, authentic Greek food that is clearly several steps up from the (now out of business) restaurant where I had my first job in high school. If you get there later, you'll have some unexpected entertainment, although the music did make conversation a little difficult. We called it a night and went home and had a nice chat with Uncle Bruce over a glass of wine, then headed for bed.