Oh Shenandoah

Road Trip: Day Eleven. Miles travelled: 3700. States visited: 12. Time zones covered: 4

We stayed in a terrible hotel last night. It was a last-minute, knee-jerk booking, because there wasn't a place we wanted to see between Nashville and Washington DC, but the journey was too far to drive in one go. We essentially stuck a pin in a map, came up with Roanoke, and booked the Days Inn because it was cheap!

It resembled a car park: one of those low-level, three-storey ones you get in Midlands towns where space is not an issue. It smelt of wee, damp and alcohol. Our room was specifically sold as a non smoking room, but it stank of fags, and the bed sheet was covered in cigarette burns. Sam had something creepy written on the mirror in his room which appeared to say "soul you guys," and we had claw marks on the bathroom door like someone had been locked in there and desperately tried to escape. We all decided it was the start of a horror film. A group of backpackers turn up in a town in the middle of nowhere and get picked off one by one. Sadly all four of us meet the profile of the first person to get killed in any horror movie. To live to tell the tail, we'd need to have donned a bikini!

In the night someone was violently banging on the hotel room doors. It was disconcerting to say the least! None of us slept well.

We were on the road by 9, and made a snap decision to visit the Natural Bridge, which, it turns out, was one of the first tourist destinations in the US for East Coast "civilised" types who wanted an experience of the Wilderness. The Natural Bridge is a 150-foot high rock formation, which, unsurprisingly, resembles a huge bridge. As early as the 1830s, adrenaline-junky tourists were paying a dollar to be lowered from the arch of the bridge into the valley below in a metal cage. I'm thrilled to report that they were accompanied, as they dangled perilously, by a violinist! We're told a young George Washington climbed twenty feet up the side of the formation and carved his initials. They're still there today.

During the Civil War, it was used as an ad-hoc shot-making tower. Hot lead was dropped from the bridge into the cool waters of the creek below, thereby doing away with the expense of building an official tower.

The valley which leads up to the bridge smells verdant and mossy. Strange birds squawk. Crickets hiss and chirp in curious sonic waves. Butterflies the size of British bats flutter about. It's really very lovely.

The area was the traditional home of the Monocan indigenous people, and there's a reproduction village down there where descendants of the tribe wander around spoon-whittling and growing sunflowers. A huge sign informs visitors of the things not to say, which include telling any of them that they "don't look Indian" or calling them "red skins, squaws or half breeds". It's astounding that people need to be told this stuff. It's rather dangerous as well, because it puts these words into people's heads!

We poked our heads into a saltpetre mine and saw the entrances to a few mysterious underground rivers before arriving at the end of the trail, a charming waterfall which glides down a smooth piece of rock jutting out of the hillside at a 45 degree angle. The water splays out across the rock like a rather fine and frothy table cloth, which is, no doubt, the reason why they call it the Lace Falls.

What is a visit to Virginia without seeing the famous Blue Ridge Mountains? I only discovered today that they're actually part of the Appalachians, so, as we have annual membership to all the US National Parks, we thought we'd swing into the Shenandoah National Park, curtesy of the Skyline Drive which snakes its way through the entire park.

Shenandoah is known for its wild flowers and we stopped alongside a wonderful meadow filled with bees and butterflies. The silence up in those mountains was glorious. Not a car or plane to be heard. The Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia really do look blue from a distance. The hillsides are all covered in dense, deciduous trees which, from afar, look like moss. Actually, it's not dissimilar to a rain forest, when you peer down into the valleys. You half expect to see howler monkeys jumping about in the trees!

We pulled into Washington DC and immediately got stuck in the middle of the mother of all traffic jams. That'll teach us for timing our arrival in the capital of the USA to coincide with evening rush hour!

You only really become aware of the city as the freeway ushers you across the epic Potomac River. At that point you catch sight of some of those white, gleaming, iconic monuments and realise you're somewhere really rather important.


We're staying in an area called DuPont Circle, which appears to be a fairly happening part of town, possibly like a younger, cooler version of Mayfair. A sax player seems to be a resident busker on one of the corners. When we arrived he was playing upbeat songs to a backing track. When we returned at night he was crooning unaccompanied jazz to the moon!




My first sense of Washington DC is that it's a fast-paced city, quite like London in that respect. Unlike London, it's spotlessly clean, and, as a result, a little like a giant film set. The people feel like they're trying too hard, and taking themselves incredibly seriously. Walking down the street is like walking around a live TV studio. It's like people are screaming "look at how busy and important I am!" Working in politics could well be responsible for that. I was somewhat horrified to come across a well-dressed woman earlier, waiting at the bus stop, who was actually doing press ups on the sidewalk! There's a time and a place.




This city, with its somewhat aloof residents, has unveiled a somewhat awkward contradiction. The people we've met in the Middle America - the Trump voters, the ones I was wary of or dismissed as homophobes and rednecks - have been delightfully polite to us. We haven't encountered the merest jot of homophobia and everyone has been friendly and very helpful. But in a so-called Liberal city, where everyone is learned, everyone's far less polite and far more self-important.




Our hotel is lovely, but we were instantly forced to changed rooms on account of our neighbour having two yappie dogs who barked in irritating little high-pitched voices constantly from the moment I entered the room. Imagine bringing dogs like that to a hotel and leaving them unattended in a room?




We frog-marched ourselves down to the ceremonial part of town as the sun set. Quite a lot of the government buildings look like buildings on Whitehall. There's a fairly large police presence down there and when we arrived, a lot of the public spaces had been cordoned off. A low-flying helicopter screeched over our heads at one point and we wondered if it was President Cunt because, after it had cleared, the cordons were lifted.




We went to look at the White House, which is disappointing. In order to get there, you have to walk across a muddy grassy field with no footpath. It looks like a ludicrous zombie pilgrimage. People stumble across the field to pay homage to Trump (and I suppose the building) like elderly women head for the stage in an Alfie Boe open air concert. Upon reaching the White House, you're confronted by cheap-looking security fences which have "restricted area" written all over them, blocking out the view. Buckingham Palace must be every bit a terrorist target and yet the people who go there are treated with far more respect, and offered much better views.




As we walked around the large, somewhat pompous monuments, I found myself realising that the election of Trump has spoilt American politics for me. If the checks and balances weren't present to stop that man from being elected then my respect for the system has to dwindle. I felt that very strongly as I walked about.




I also realised that my interest in history has always been about the people rather than the rulers. I am much more fascinated by the lives of the ordinary Yankee soldiers in the American civil war than I ever have been in what Lincoln said in the Gettysburg Address. That said, this trip has also made me realise that I am woefully under-informed when it comes to all American history. Sam is far more well read, and was like a dog with two tails wandering about this evening.




The George Washington monument is impressively large. That's the great big obelisk you see in the pictures. I assumed, it might be the size of Cleopatra's Needle. It's twenty times larger.




The walk from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial is deeply impressive. The two areas are linked by a reflecting pool. The buildings, all flood lit, shimmer on the surface, and a peach and lavender sunset and a tiny crescent moon were also screaming for attention! It's very lovely but the brackish water down there is a Mecca for mosquitoes, and we all got bitten to death.




I learned today that 404,800 Americans were killed in the Second World War (which I was sad to see they merely refer to as "The War"), but that 620,000 died in the American Civil War, which feels like an enormous number.




People seem to treat the Lincoln Memorial as a bit of a shrine, and they can get a little fanatical up there. I made the mistake of inadvertently wandering into a picture one woman was organising. She grabbed my wrist with some force and shouted "wait" in my face. Not a whiff of an "excuse me" or a "thank you" as I waited. "Less of the aggression next time..." I said as I walked away. It was destined to be an awful picture anyway. People like that just need to get more adept at taking pictures in crowded places!






We ate at Panera this evening, courtesy of my brother-in-law who got me a gift token for my birthday. It was rather lovely to be able to treat everyone for a meal. So Sascha, if you're reading this: many thanks.