Beckley, WV

Continued from NYC Day 3.


Grumpy? Time to leave NYC today.


Uber, please take us to the train station.


On this trip we learned that no Uber so far will refuse to give rides to kids without booster seats.


Always cool to see mechanical vertical parking machines.


As we got closer to the train station, the traffic got more jam packed and we came upon a road block. They had blocked off the roads around Madison Square Garden for some event and the train station is at the next block. We told our Uber to stop and we’ll walk the last block with our bags.


The train station is that white building at the end of the block. I asked a police nearby what event was happening, and she said it was police school graduation. But…why do they need to block off all of the streets around it?


Here, not too bad of a walk. But Little KL complained about his bag the whole time anyway.


Lovely glass roof.


I hate stations that do not tell you which platform you will be on ahead of time. They obviously already know, but they just leave it until the last minute just so you are forced to walk around and shop.


Little KL watching all of our bags…sort of.


Cute.


Baguette, but my kids calls it hard bread.


Time to get on the train.


They are excited to ride the escalators. I think they’ll mostly remember riding on so many escalators on this trip.


I sat at an adjacent 4 top by myself and blogged. Love trains.


Lunch from the cafe car. Our train leaving at 10am from NYC means that it was too early to buy lunch from the restaurants at the station.


It works.


Made it to Philly.


Cool, my seat mates got off at Philly, so now I can stretch out a little. American high speed trains are not like Asian or European high speed trains. For one, it’s slower and the tracks are not very smooth with lots of bumps.


Despite taking dramamine, CL gets motion sickness. Yeah, these trains are not smooth like other high speed trains I’ve been on.


Cutie.


Starting to feel a little better after eating some crackers and taking a break from her ipad.


Slaving away updating the blog. We are all in our jackets because it’s cold on the train.


Feeling much better now. Good enough to eat her burger for lunch.


Big bite.


Loves screen time.


Row houses. Such an unusual sight for me. Don’t see anything like this in Texas.


They wanted to see what the cafe car looked like. Well, here you go.


Made it to DC right on time.


It’s hotter in DC than in NYC.


Called an Uber to take us back to our car.


Immediately, everyone overheats even in the shade. It’s hot.


We walked out to the pick up spot for Ubers. Thanks DC for not putting any shading device while people wait here. It’s blazing hot and we are all suffering. We had moved out from the shade prematurely because we thought the Uber would get here sooner, but they had some lane closures right before the pickup and what should have taken 1 min ended up taking probably 5 minutes.


Trying to get some shade and relief from the heat in the from of mama.


Finally in AC.


Everyone had a miserable time waiting out in the sun.


Uber dropped us at the garage where I had parked my car 6 days ago when we arrived in DC.


Stressful driving in this super low ceiling tight garage.


Dropped off the garage key card at the apartment building front desk. The key card ended up not working anyway and some attendant had to open the exit gate for me anyway.


Car is covered in a layer of dust since they’ve been doing construction in the basement garage.


Alright, a long drive ahead of us. It’s about 1:30pm and we’ve got a long drive to West Virginia.


Still jamming to Fiona Apple. And look, it’s 100 degrees outside, and humid. It’s hot as shit.


Snack time.


I feel bad for people who still own the Fisker Ocean. It’ll just break and not be able to be fixed at some point.


102! Wish we could have come on the road trip when there was a cold front instead of a heat wave.


Getting some rain.


More rain coming.


PL was throwing major tude but anytime we tried to take a picture of her grumpy expression she would smile big for the camera and then go right back to being grumpy.


Coal is a big deal here.


That’s one way to carry a piece of wood too long to fit inside, strap it down onto your spoiler. lol.


More fast food. So much driving.


The crack on the glass got significantly bigger while the car sat still for 6 days in the parking garage. Surprised me a bit that sitting still would cause it to grow so much.


We are in logging country with trucks carrying logs.


Made it to West Virginia! We are going through West Virginia because I’ve never been through West Virginia and just wanted to see what it looks like.


And to no one’s surprise, West Virginia looks exactly the same as Western Virigina.


Some fun twisty roads coming up ahead though.


WWWweeeeee. RL started getting car sick though and I had to slow way down. She made it and didn’t throw up.


Little KL pointed at this boardwalk and said that he found the bridge. Lol.


This is the bridge we were looking for, New River Gorge Bridge. For 26 years it was the longest single arch span bridge in the world, and still today is the longest single arch span bridge in the world outside of China. Kinda cool I guess.


There’s a trail of stairs leading to a lower view point. If we had more time, we would have made that little hike and gotten a closer photo showing how high this bridge is relative to the river below.


Oh well, onwards to our hotel. It’s been a long day of travel.


Driving across New River Gorge Bridge. A shame that they coned off the outer lane due to construction and we couldn’t get a good look over the edge.


More toll lanes. I’m surprised you are required to pay toll on an interstate highway.


Reached our hotel in Beckley, WV. This is what $240 a night gets you. Really expensive if you think about it since we are in some random small town in West Virginia.


Our window doesn’t offer much of a view. Oh well, time to rest, sleep, wake up tomorrow morning and get a move on.

To be continued at Atlanta.