You know that expression “Blow my Socks off”? Yup, that happened to me today. We are staying at a Fairfield Inn, which is a basic Marriott hotel. I chose it as it was on the Blue Ridge Parkway and 90 minutes from Dulles and would provide an easy drive for Andrew to get us to our next stop in Roanoke, VA. Also, in reading about the city it seemed to have a pretty cool downtown!
As the Fairfield provides a free breakfast, Andrew and I went down to check it out. Now I have a limited amount of food with me and in hotels like this I normally can have a boiled egg, fruit, yogurt, juice and tea. That is sufficient for me for breakfast and I do have a couple of protein bars with me – having Celiac Disease and being a Diabetic now, I never travel without them. We have stayed at a bunch of Fairfields over the last few years and their breakfasts are almost always the same – I can count on the items above.
You can imagine my surprise when I rounded the corner to the breakfast area and saw this:
Yup, there went my socks! They just blew off – they are gone! I have NEVER in all my travels (so 40+ years as a Celiac) been presented with a gluten free waffle machine to make waffles! Holy smokes! To have a “Gluten Free Section” was just down right amazing! The only thing that was kind of amusing to me is the basket of Udi’s muffins and bagels – as I was standing there two ladies came up and one took half of what is in the basket after I took this picture! This brought back memories of last year and the Celiac Tour of Italy where other tour groups were taking our GF Schar goodies! I said to the lady who took all the items, “is it just awesome to have all this gluten free food AND to be able to make your own waffles? You must be so excited like I am!” She looked at me, the items in her hands and said “I do not want these if they are gluten free!” She put them back and left pretty quickly and went back to her table. The other lady who was NCGS (non celiac gluten sensitive) DID share in my excitement! Andrew basically had to peel me off the ceiling so that I ate before the placed closed! I did return to the waffle maker and made another waffle to go (along with an Udi’s bagel and muffin just for safe keeping)!
As I had read about Staunton being a cool town, we went to the Visitors Centre to pick up a couple of brochures – I wanted to see if they had a map of the Blue Ridge Parkway and a map of Virginia. I had my phone with me however having a map does not hurt and that was the map that BCAA was out of. I received both things plus a package of brochures and a bit of a dissertation of all the places we should visit in Staunton. Luckily some new prey entered the Visitor Center and I could make a break for it as Andrew was waiting in the car! So we drove around Staunton and looked at some of the things on the map and then stopped at where I really wanted to go which was the Sun Spots Glass Blowing factory.
What a great experience that was! I have had the luxury of seeing glass blowing in Hawaii at a couple of different places, in Okinawa, Japan and most recently on the island of Murano, near Venice in Italy. This process always intrigues me – how something so hot can be handled and such beautiful glass items created when the glass cools and melds. The difference from the other glass blowing that I have seen is prior demonstrations were all done in teams of 2 people (mostly men) with one being the designer and the other one being the “assistant” who does the oven work and some of the prep work of the glass. At Sun Spots they do not work in teams for the most part – they work alone – which was fascinating to see done. We saw the glass blower create a heart with a curly Q on the top so it can hang and then a glass which had a mottled glass and a translucent spray embedded in it so it had a silver tone. He had wanted it to have lines going up the side too but that did not happen. The most surprising thing was the prices in the store were VERY reasonable compared to other glass companies stores that I have also visited. Yup, had to buy something very little to commemorate the occasion!
Now back at the hotel, we got on our way to drive to Roanoke. Somehow I could not figure how to get ont the Blue Ridge Parkway (BRP), so we drove a bit on Highway 81 south and then took an exit and what I thought was the BRP, but instead was a country highway one earlier than we were supposed to turn. No issues – it was a beautiful drive and we still ended up where we wanted to – the Natural Bridge! This is a phenomenon that has happened where basically there is a rock bridge where the sandstone below the rock across the top has over time, disappeared. There is a huge amount of stairs to get down to the path to the Natural Bridge, so they let us drive down a one way road to the ticket taker and walk in from there. Access is pretty good in the USA I am finding! Here are the pictures below.
I now knew where we were on the BRP, so we easily joined it and drove it down to Roanoke – basically you drive along the ridge of the mountains where there are incredible views! Not as high as the Rockies, however as high as the Coastal Mountains. We stopped at some view points so you can see above what we enjoyed!
We got to Roanoke in good time and settled in for the evening. Part of the Marriott program at my level is you get to choose points (500) or a free items from the pantry when staying at certain lower end hotels. As the points are worth less than $4 I try and find a pantry item that is acceptable to me first, and if not I will take the points. Alas, tonight there was a pepperoni pizza in the freezer perfect for Andrew and greater than $4! I selected that so he could have something to eat for dinner while I chowed down on my waffles, turkey and cheese leftovers that we had transported from Toronto and Staunton on ice packs. It was an early night!
Our drive today – not very straight but we got there…:
