Circular Drive, a Thursday Story...

Sometimes, Michael has Thursdays off.  Sometimes, we just like to get in the car and drive.  Often, because you live in one place for so long, you take advantage of your hometown’s beauty and serenity.

Yesterday, we wanted to go to Paint Bank.  Not only to visit the trout hatchery, but also because I just like to say, “Paint Bank.”  Paint Bank.  Paint.  Bank.


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Michael had to work in the morning, so we left around noon and headed up 311 through Catawba, into New Castle. Up Pott’s Mountain and around. Around so many bends. The Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia are breathtaking, and I am ashamed of the fact that, at times, I get so bored with living here.

Days like yesterday will learn me every now and again.

We had the hatchery to ourselves, save for a family of four with two small children. There are candy dispensers full of fish food, and, for a handful of quarters, you can watch the fish dance atop the water’s skin. The tow-headed little boy, however, had a whole bucket full of food. I told Michael I, too, wanted a bucket of those dog-food-looking pellets.

“You have to be two to get those,” he said. My luck, huh? I just turned three.

(Dropping the five attached to that didn’t even help me. Not like it does when I want to buy a Happy Meal or order a grilled cheese off the kids’ menu.)

I wanted to take pictures of fish, too. The Paint Bank hatchery breeds rainbow, brook, and brown trout. Trout is a lovely, colorful species of fish. And tasty, too. However, we’ve found that the trout released into and caught too soon from our local streams tend to take on the taste of those dog-food-like pellets. And because I’m a naive photographer, I wasn’t thinking about how difficult it would be to take good photos of fish under water and the steady gaze of an afternoon sun.

Being adventurous people and because we love being in love and love each other’s company, we decided that, instead of venturing back down the mountains, we would take a left at Paint Bank and see where we would land.

State Route 600 crosses the West Virginia state line and turns into County Road 17, which runs through an unincorporated town called Waiteville, West Virginia. (It takes cajones to live back there. We must have been 60 miles from the nearest IGA.) The road follows the mountain valley through the Jefferson National Forest. Along this road we saw deer grazing in the fields and came upon a farm that raises bison.

“Oh! Ooo! Ooooooo! Ah! Look at that! Stop. Stop! Miiiiichaaaaeeeel, ssstttooooppppp!”

I screamed like someone who had never seen bison before. I screamed at the top of my lungs at the love of my life. The Subaru screeched to a halt in the middle of this country backroad, and Michael broke out in a nervous sweat as I swung open the door and jumped out of the car.

“Michele, there’s nowhere to park! I can’t just stop here! What. Are. You. Doing?!”

I’m a sucker for majesty.

Along this road, we encountered beautiful old barns with faded and rusting tin roofs and rolled hay bales strung neatly in rows. I also saw a unique 15-foot travel trailer (you know, the kind you tow behind a truck). Its owner had built a quaint little roof over it. I would have taken more photos. However, I felt very strongly that Thursday was certainly *not* a favorable day to risk ticks and chiggers. Nor was it a very good day (or place) to get shot.

County Road 17 crosses back over the state line and turns into Big Stony Creek Road, or State Route 635. It passes along the back side of Mountain Lake and ends at 460 in Ripplemead. Heading back toward Blacksburg, we stopped in Pembroke, which is where we put in when we canoe the New River.

The air was thick and wet. The roads were polka-dotted with huge puddles. But the sun was still shining and strong. We realized we had been chasing gulley-washers all day, and a fresh storm was forming and getting ready to cross the river.

Just beyond that bridge and to the left are a set of rapids. In the center, a small, wooded island. To the far right, a narrower waterway. This is where, on one river trip and having just cleared the rapids, Michael and I realized that we had forgotten the keys to our second car, parked up-river at our take out spot in Ripplemead. This is where we drug Big Red, our old Coleman canoe, against the raging current through that narrow waterway. This is also where I almost lost a whole toenail.

(Because, in all of my infinite wisdom that day, I chose to wear Tevas instead of tennis shoes. And, no, I have never worn Tevas to the New River again.)

The thing about the New River at Pembroke is that it looks so tranquil, like the epitome of peace. But it is not. It is vicious. It flows north for a reason.

After a short prayer for my toenail so soon ripped from its fleshy bed, we headed up 460 into Blacksburg. It was time for a visit to PK’s. Michael filled his belly with some of his favorite chicken wings, and I had the best turkey-and-smoked-gouda sandwich that I have ever eaten.

I snapped this final photo from the car window, the last blue crescent moon of sky light before running into rain.