Western Virginia recommenation

SJ,

Team TBF is headed to the big city (Dee Cee) to look for a new place to live next week. We have an extra day to kill somewhere in western Virginia as we head up I-81.

Any recommendations? Blacksburg, Lexington, Charlottesville, etc? We're down for pretty much anything.

 

Luray Caverns. Then, if the weather is clear, take the Skyline Drive (an extension of the Blue Ridge Parkway) north toward I-66 to take you into DC.

 

Monticello is pretty cool. The old part of the UVa campus, the Rotunda and the Lawn, are sweet.

I have always wanted to visit VMI. Never have. Bull Run battlefield is pretty neat, but you can probably do that from your new digs, which will probably be out in west Fairfax County if you hope to find anything affordable. My first cousin lives about a block from Chantilly HS and nothing there is cheap.

TBF, taking the Orange line to work every day. Pentagon?

 

Lexington is nice, just not a lot of tourist destinations. Charlottesville is gorgeous. I've found the area to be more of a nice place to look at things, but there aren't a lot of tourist destinations outside of Civil War history.

You could find some good hikes. Salem has a baseball team.

 

Also, Blacksburg and Charlottesville aren't on 81. Big detour. Going to Charlottesville would be easier on a trip to DC. The area between Charlottesville and DC is very pretty and a nice drive.

 

Could do much worse than Staunton. Good friend of mine from school days is there now with his family.

 

Really? When I was in Lexington the only reason to go to Staunton was it had a movie theater.

 

Route 11 is a nice drive. You get to see the Shenandoah Valley and all the little towns. Drive the Blue Ridge Parkway.

 

Woodstock and Winchester are nice. I only spent a night in both places. You could go up to Frederick. I think they still have a baseball team.

 

Lynchburg has a baseball team, but is about an hour off 81.

If you do go that way, there’s a really cool D-Day Memorial in a little town called Bedford that’s about halfway between Roanoke and Lynchburg.

Then you could pick up Rt. 29 in Lynchburg and take it through Charlottesville all the way to the western DC ‘burbs.

 

And if you take 29 north of Lynchburg, you’ll travel through Nelson County, which got hit by the remnants of Hurricane Camille in 1969 with over 100 lives lost. More than Biloxi IIRC.

 

I went to Tech and love Blacksburg but it's not much more than a college town, not a ton to do there in the summer.

Downtown Staunton has some pretty cool vibes, actually, and is right off 81. I second the idea of going up 29 from Lynchburg. There are a lot of wineries/breweries/outdoor activities in Nelson County. You can stop in Charlottesville on the way and 29 will take you up through Culpeper and Warrenton before you start to hit the fringes of the western D.C. suburbs.