Saturday, October 8, 2016

Your favorite Virginia college town in the mountains

A.K.A. Blacksburg!

I moved to Virginia Beach in May, which will be the subject of a later post, and after realizing how hellish Memorial Day weekend would be in the area, I opted to take a quick getaway to Blacksburg. It's a groovy little college town situated along the Blue Ridge portion of the Appalachians, and aside from all the awesome hiking within an hour's drive away, it's got a lot of nice things to do in town.

The following sign was a curious one I saw at a rest area en route via I-64 near Waynesboro. Toilets that use mineral oil instead of water and thus have zero effluent discharge?? I had never heard of or seen this before, but the toilet liquid was yellowish, so I would have assumed it was just the area's water, were it not for this sign.

I got to check out the Huckleberry Trail on a bike, which provided a nice ~10 mile ride around the area, and I also enjoyed Heritage Park, which had some sweet wildlife, nice wetlands and streams, nightshade plants, and decrepit old barn buildings.
.. Old barn buildings complete with artsy graffiti, as expected.
Blacksburg also boasts a cute, compact downtown with some good restaurants and a bus system with a great reputation that I sadly didn't get the opportunity to try out. The best part: the students were gone for summer! Hooray for a being a crabby old townie!