Left Staunton (pronounced Stanton) after breakfast at about 7.30am and joined the crowd heading north into the Shenandoah Valley, on I 81. Close to 50 miles up the road, we turned east towards the Blue Ridge Mountains and crossed that range through Thornton Gap http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thornton_Gap
This part of the country is replete with historical markers describing a variety of past exploits mainly focussing on the Civil War (this is where the famous Stonewall Jackson out generalled the Union Army and inflicted defeat after defeat on numerically superior forces. For a long time during the Civil War, the standard of Union generals was distinctly inferior to their southern counterparts. A good deal of Confederate raiding also took place here, and there are a few markers to one of the more famous raiders, "the gray ghost" Colonel John Mosby. http://www.civilwarhome.com/mosbybio.htm
The road took us through the mountains and some of these areas show distinct signs of the season changing
Not a great photo, but it shows a little of the colour of autumn.
Coming out of the Blue Ridge Mountains and into a place called Sperryville, we saw this
The Halloween Day celebrations are fast approaching and I think this is one of the gruesome figures specially done for the day. We saw many similar creations in the states we travelling through, but this was the first we'd had the opportunity to stop and photograph - it was also one of the most creative.
Once out of the Blue Ridge Mountains we joined up with I 66 and found our way back home to Springfield, having been on the road for 7 days and travelled around 1000 miles.
I took the rental car back to Avis today and found that the total bill amounted to $284, which I thought was very good value for money, given that we rented a GPS (without which we would have been lost for the majority of the 7 days) and took out $12 per day Loss Damage Waiver (that gave us limited cover for any damage to $3000 and was well worth the peace of mind). It meant that we were able to hire the car (a Camry sized vehicle) and GPS, for a little over $28 per day.
