There were really only two directions to go when I left Assateague Island. I could have gone south, crossing the Chesapeake Bay on the 17-mile long Bay Bridge-Tunnel into Norfolk, but instead chose to travel north on U.S. Route 50, crossing the bay at Stevensville and passing by Annapolis.
My first destination was the small town of Madison in northwest Virginia, and second was Shenandoah National Park. To avoid most of the traffic in the Washington, D. C. area I took U.S. 301 south through Maryland and across the Potomac River, then Virginia Route 3 through Fredericksburg.
It had been a nice leisurely drive, for the most part. Cloudy, sprinkled now and then with light showers and the occasional torrential downpour. The latter came just as I was getting into Fredericksburg. It was raining so hard it was nearly impossible to see. In fact, I pulled over to the side of the road for a while until it let up some. Then when I got into Fredericksburg, traffic was tied up with several minor accidents. I later learned that they had gotten several inches of rain in a very short time and that I had just gotten into the tail end of the storm. Lucky me.
Even better, as I got out of Fredericksburg, the rain stopped. The sun came out. The clouds broke up. And blue skies appeared. It turned into a beautiful evening. I stopped for the night at Culpeper, a couple miles down the road from Fredericksburg and just a few miles from my first destination in Virginia - Madison.
2 comments:
That's a pretty nice route to take! If you're headed north at all from Shenandoah on I-81, into WVa, be sure to make a side trip to Shepardstown, northeast of Martinsburg, for a charming stop.
Welcome to Virginia! There are a lot of beautiful places to see here. As a matter of fact, we're going to go to some of them soon, as this month we're taking our younger daughter to see some Virginia colleges.
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