I seemed to have overlooked the fact that I had the most excellent Thanksgiving ever one week ago... OK let me rephrase that, I seemed to have forgotten to reflect on the fact that I had the most excellent Thanksgiving ever, one week ago.  To clear things up for my loving lover, I didn't forget that we had what most people would consider to be the "time of our lives" (I disagree with that bold statement though because we will have many "times of our lives"), I just didn't really sit back and appreciate everything we accomplished.  Long story short, or short story long, you can interpret this rant however you would like to, we had an amazing time.  So last Tuesday (November 24th), Crista (my 21 year old diamond who is attending Emmanuel College in Boston) came down to sunny old Virginia Beach/Norfolk to celebrate the eating of turkey, potatoes, pork, stuffing, and gravy at the McDowell household.  We started with the essentials, meeting the parents...which went extremely well if you ask me, cause now I have my mother breathing down my neck telling me that I have to hold on to this girl forever (which I will, don't worry Mom/Crista).  Meeting your partner's immediate family is always a bit nerve-wrecking and may bring on anxiety, but meeting your partner's immediate family + another 15 extended family members is pee-your-pants stagefright.  I/She was lucky though because 2 of my cousins brought their girlfriends as well and spirits were high throughout the house.  Anyways sorry that I skipped to the Thursday activities first, Wednesday was a bit slow and gloomy, I gave her a mini-tour of the city, a look at the property/lake, and time for her to get comfortable.  So that was Wednesday and Thursday.  Oh and Thursday was good for one more thing, I ate turkey and enjoyed it for the first time in my entire life, so props to you papa dukes, you really know how to cook a mean turkey (supposedly he wrapped the turkey with damp towels and let it sit in the grill for a couple hours to that the turkey would retain it's juiciness, creme de la creme I tell you).  Moving on to Friday, the day where the fun fun stuff begins...
 
We woke up at 9 am, ate breakfast, packed our bags, grabbed camping materials, stopped at the gas station to check tire pressure and fill up the tank, and then hit the road (I-64 West) for West Virginia.  We left at about 2:30 pm and arrived in Watauga National Park at 7:00 pm, covered a lot of ground in a (kind of)short while.  We knew when we entered West Virginia cause all we could see was tree after tree after mountain after incline after decline after perverse hillbilly after cliff, the list goes on.  Well we got to the park with plans to set up camp on some sort of public campground...unfortunately, Campground A was closed.  Acting upon the given circumstance, we decided to park just outside of the campground (which could have very well been illegal) and set up our tent in below freezing temperatures. It wasn't happening, there was no way we were going to try and pitch this tent in the heart of deer-hunter-ville with no light or privacy for a fire.  So we convinced ourselves (mainly through imagining the worst possible scenarios taken from films her and I have seen in our lifetimes) to head to Campground B, which yielded better results...for now.  We figured out how to pitch the tent and got ourselves situated. We then started a fire with those extremely flammable 6 hour burn logs and proceeded to cozy up in the same sleeping bag (for heat purposes, dirty minds).  After all of that hard work, we laid for about 4-5 hours with our eyes open, Crista may have even rested with her eyes open for the entire night (so she says).  I was thinking of counter-attacks I would perform should anything life threatening happen to either of us (ex: Jason with machete heading towards tent; Black Bear smelling the scent of turkey sandwich left in our mouths; Rapist trying to open the tent to get inside; Park Rangers gone wild; etc.).  My only sure fire counter-attack was to lay in the fetal position with my forearms over my face in case a bear were to attack me... I love Bear Grylls.   Anyhow, we got through the night, woke up with frozen appendages (specifically my penis), got in the car, and headed off...into a ditch.  It was bad.  I thought the road was wider than it actually was, and consequentially, we wound up in a ditch with the tires not being able to grip onto the wet, muddy, fiasco of a ground below where we depressingly sat.  It looked like we were going to have to call the tow truck until a park employee appeared (by chance) to save the day.  She called another employee to try and pull us out of the ditch with his truck... too bad we don't have a hitch on the front or back of the car.  It really seemed like we were going to have to call the tow-truck, but I really didn't want to spend $50.00 on a mistake I made, and I really didn't want them to find out that my temporary drivers license was very very temporary (only lasting 30 days from September 10th, damn the DMV... I will explain the faults of federal bureaucracy in another post though).  So we resorted to a shovel and wooden planks, and WALLAH, I drove the car out of the ditch...and straight into the tailgate of the employees truck leaving scratches down the left side of the car <----FML submission?  After this long delay, we headed for D.C., but on the way we ran into Luray Caverns (which just so happened to be on Crista's list of things to do in her lifetime).  There we saw the worlds largest instrument which was an organ attached to tens of stalactites and stalagmites each producing different sounds when touched.  Next came the District of Columbia, where we would see the Lincoln, FDR, Theodore Roosevelt, and Jefferson memorials as well as the Washington, World War II, Iwo Jima, and Korean War monuments.  We walked through the Watergate Complex, where the infamous Nixon slush fund re-election scandal tapes were kept.  We toured the Kennedy Performing Arts Center.  We SAB in front of the White House, well I did.  We went to the Nationals Air and Space Museum (by Dulles Airport, this museum featured the gondola my uncle-in-law* used during his attempt at shattering the world record for free falling altitude, R.I.P. Nick) and the Museum of Natural History (where we saw pre-historic fossils like the T-Rex, the Hope Diamond, pieces of meteorites, and evidence of evolution) and saw the FBI building, National Archive, the other 18 Smithsonians, the National Mall, and Embassy Row.  Apart from that we ate at a Thai place called Absolute Thai which was right outside of the Verizon Center (Washington Wizards) and stayed at the Allen Lee hotel for $25.00 a piece cause I snuck in...oh my!  Believe it or not, we actually attempted to go to Baltimore at around 8 pm on Sunday night, we got there and everything was just about closed except for P.F. Changs, which is a horrible place to eat by the way, you can basically taste the texturized MSG (Monosodium Glutamate) with your tongue.  The Steelers were playing the Ravens right down the street though and Baltimore sure does have crowd support cause we heard roars from 30 blocks down.  We saw the USS Constellation (the last sail-only warship built by the U.S. Navy) so that was pretty cool.  I did want to see Fort McHenry but we took a wrong turn and it was way too late so the birthplace of The Star Spangled Banner by Francis Scott Key will have to wait till the next time.  After that was all said and done, we drove through D.C. in hopes of seeing the Pentagon but failed.  Then what was supposed to be a 3 hour drive back home was a 6 hour moving form of torture.  We slept for an hour at a rest stop though so I guess we were smart about it... but then we hit unexpected traffic about 30 minutes from my house which then tripled that 30 minute estimated arrival time... douches.  I had to be at class that same morning so you know how fun that was.  Later that day Crista and I went to First Landing State Park (voted one of America's best?) to eat magical peanut butter sandwiches which would take us on a journey through the park ending with us being escorted out of the park by the police.  Sounds serious but it really wasn't, we were just in the park past its closing time... but boy was I freaked out... I did think driving on mush would be a lot harder than it actually was, I found that I was actually very focused and receptive while driving, but thats just me, and I'm just kind of experienced... I guess.  At the end of that night Crista was supposed to leave, but her and I have this little habit of staying one or two days late because of our oh-so-strong love keeping us from leaving eachother when we are supposed to (resulting in lots of made up work having to be done for classes).  It all went well, and on Tuesday we took it easy and I took her to see her first Navy base at Little Creek.  Then we came back to the house to cuddle our final hours away, and as expected, we left at 12:20 am to try to catch the 12:30 am bus to NYC (costing $35.00 through Apex which would then connect with Boston through Fung Wah for $15.00).  It usually takes 15 minutes to get to the Newtown Road bus stop but it was late and the streets were empty so I made it there in about 7... as much as I wanted her to stay, she had to go (to class or something like that).  Oh yeah, and we watched Twilight: New Moon and it was alright but for the most part is sucked my left genital.  
Cheers and stay interesting (I promise I won't post blogs much longer than this),

Colin