Five hours later...
We rolled into Charlottesville around eleven o'clock at night, roughly four hours after we planned. No one was surprised. A few weeks earlier we'd seen a show on the Travel Channel about a place called the Emerald Hollow Mine, a public mine where visitors can sluice, creek, and dig for various precious and semi-precious stones. Since the two of us like playing in the mud it sounded like a swell thing to add to our trip. We'd even gone so far as to reserve a campground spot, since we'd brought along a small tent and sleeping bags. "Look how adventurous we are!" we said to ourselves as we rolled out of town. But nature had other plans for us, as just east of the Charlottesville city limits a storm rolled in and pelted our car with rain so hard we had to pull off the road. Couldn't see a darn thing. And for some reason we didn't feel like pitching a tent in a muddy campground in that kind of weather, so we struck a deal with a half-asleep hotel manager for the last room with a full size bed and slept out the storm.
*We're on to Clear Lake, Texas, where we'll spend the night and go to NASA's Houston campus tomorrow. Check back late tonight or tomorrow morning for further updates on our mining adventures. We kind of looked like this. That's me on the left.*
