So I’m finally caught up with my trip posts. It’s 10:20 PM and we’re in a hotel room in Dayton, Ohio. We traveled from Waxhaw this morning, picked up my sunglasses from the Cozart’s where I’d left them last night, then headed up through NC, Virginia, West Virginia, and most of the way through Ohio. It was actually a pretty good drive, not too tough, went pretty quickly.

We stopped in West Virginia at a Cracker Barrel for lunch. I’d never been in West Virginia before today. Well, not quite true; I think our college choir bus went through that little arm of WV and the little arm of Maryland on our way to Pennsylvania one year, but that hardly counts. Anyway, maybe the Cracker Barrel experience today wasn’t totally representative of WV and its people and culture, but maybe it is… I’ll just take it as a data point. So, we’re all familiar with the stereotypes of West Virginia and its people; of uncultured inbred toothless hillbillies… you get the idea. The funny part today was this: had I gone into that restaurant with no preconceived stereotypes about West Virginians, the ideas I’d have picked up in that hour would have pretty well matched the preconception I already had. I saw more people without teeth, in bib overalls, and/or just plain scary looking in one hour in that Cracker Barrel than I have seen in a month of Sundays at home. (Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t fearful or anything… more just amused.)

Over the Rhine graced the CD player this afternoon in honor of our Ohio travels, and tonight we hit a shopping mall to stretch our legs and eat some supper. Tomorrow morning I think we’ll be hitting the local Tim Horton’s in honor of my favorite Canadian *Dan (who speaks so highly of them!), then it’s back onto the interstate through Indiana, Illinois, and finally into Iowa. It will be good to be home.