Apr

12

Trip to Virginia

Filed Under Events, Pictures 

This past weekend we traveled up to southwestern Virginia to look for housing for next year. See the gallery for new pictures. Many of the pictures are included as links in the post below.

For those who don’t know, we will be moving to Virginia for further schooling next year. Melanie will be attending Radford University to get a degree in Speech Pathology. Andrew will be trying to find work and might begin his master’s degree in philosophy at Virginia Tech.

Radford University is located in the city of Radford, near Blacksburg (where Virginia Tech is), and Christiansburg (which is on Interstate 81), and about 30 miles southwest of Roanoke. We will probably live in Radford at an apartment complex called Cedar Valley.

Now, for the stories from the trip:

What we did
We left Greenville on Thursday afternoon following the Living Gallery performance. We had decided to drive up to Winston-Salem, NC to spend the night at Mel R.’s condo. It was actually a fairly nice drive. It’s about three hours away and we took a road that let us avoid Charlotte traffic.

Mel’s condo is quite nice. She shares it with Denae, another friend from high school/college. We got in about 9 pm and didn’t go to bed until midnight. And then it was cold. We were on an air mattress in the living room, which didn’t help. Neither of us slept very well Thursday night.

On Friday morning we got up early and started toward Virginia. We wanted to be there at 9 when one of the prospective apartment places opened. It takes about an hour and a half to get from Winston-Salem to Radford.

Friday was a long day. We started at the place in Radford and spent the next 6 or 7 hours looking at apartments. Most of them weren’t exactly what we were looking for. One in particular was quite nice, but they had only 4-bedroom apartments left. That seemed to be a problem in general. Since most of the apartments are intended for students, they are large and they sell quickly. Apparently many of the high-demand (i.e. one- or two-bedroom) apartments are spoken for by mid-October. We even tried to find some places in Blacksburg, but with only slight success. Again, the pickings were slim, and the pricing may have been a little higher than we wanted.

One thing we discovered about the area is that the people who planned the roads must have been trying to discourage visitors. We got turned around so many times it wasn’t funny. We didn’t have a good, complete map. That would have helped. But half of the roads are named the same thing, they don’t run in straight lines, and they don’t always actually go anywhere.

Melanie had a meeting at 3 pm at Radford. We were in Blacksburg and decided to start heading back. This is where we got turned around. We ended up nearly driving in a circle. Melanie called Radford to tell them that she would be late. The secretary she spoke to provided some helpful directions. We ended up being only 10 minutes late or so, but it was frustrating.

While Melanie was at her meeting, I went to visit one more apartment complex, Cedar Valley. It turned out to be relatively attractive. It was much more like what we were looking for. We are planning to apply to stay there, and we will keep everyone posted on how that process goes.

We got a hotel on Friday evening and then went to get supper at O’Charley’s. Again, we got lost. We had to stop at a CVS to ask directions. We finally found the restaurant on the other side of the town. While we were eating, it started snowing. By the time we were done, it was cold outside and snowing even harder.

Saturday morning was nice. We slept in some and got a good breakfast at the hotel. It had snowed some more during the night, but we were quite unprepared for the temperature outside. It was 24 degrees. The wind made it feel like 11. We had decided to drive up to Virginia Tech and look around the campus. On our way, we saw that Blacksburg had more snow and that it looked like even more snow was on the way. Sure enough. We got onto Virginia Tech’s campus right as the next wave of snow hit. For a few minutes, we could see only about a car length in front of us because it was snowing so hard. It stopped after a few minutes, and the fresh new snow made the drillfield look beautiful.

We then drove back down to Radford to take some pictures of Radford U. From there we headed back toward Greenville. It’s a nice drive, really. It took us about 4 hours to drive home.

Observations
Radford is not the nicest city I’ve ever seen. It seems that the local government may have made a few poor decisions quite a while ago, and they are living with the consequences now. The downtown is reasonably attractive, even though many of the shops are empty. A lot of the housing is for students, and it’s less attractive than the rest of the city. Many of the units look like they’ve not been renovated since they were built (probably in the 60s and 70s).

Blacksburg is quite nice. It has a small-town flavor, but there is still plenty to do. There is also a lot of student housing, but most of it seems more attractive. The apartments blend in better with everything as well. Maybe that’s because there is more to blend in with.

Melanie seemed to really like the department she will studying with. The professors she talked to seemed friendly and helpful, and her advisor had helpful information. The program is teaching-oriented, rather than research-oriented, a rarity among similar departments it seems.

In all, the trip seems to have been profitable. We are looking forward to moving there and beginning this next phase.

Comments

3 Responses to “Trip to Virginia”

  1. LAM on April 12th, 2007 5:00 pm

    Congratulations on being accepted at Radford, Mel. It looks like a beautiful campus. I hope your job and apartment hunt is soon successful.

  2. Sarah on April 12th, 2007 8:03 pm

    Looks like a nice place! I’m glad that you had a good trip. Good luck!

  3. Emily Byers Pitts on May 11th, 2007 9:53 am

    hi andrew and mel! I just discovered your blog and read that you’re going to be in virginia. Jonathan and I will be moving up there at the end of the summer too! He’s ging to be getting his masters in architecture at VT. will you be our friends :) ? heehee. have you have any success in finding a place to live? we’re going to have to take a trip up there sometime in the near future to find a place. looking online just doesn’t cut it :) .

Leave a Reply