{"id":34994,"date":"2025-12-21T20:50:22","date_gmt":"2025-12-22T01:50:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=34994"},"modified":"2025-12-22T13:32:56","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T18:32:56","slug":"the-road-less-taken","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=34994","title":{"rendered":"The Road Less Taken"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Somewhere south of Culpeper, just after sunset, a slim sliver of the moon hung in the wetern sky.<\/p>\n<p>I drove south to Lynchburg on a bit of a leisurely, scenic route.  I started out as many of these trips start, heading north to Harrisburg then turning south down Interstate 81.  I got off to a later start than I&#8217;d intended, and my legs ached by the time I reached the Virginia Welcome Center.  I stopped there to stretch the legs, and when I studied the road map at the entrance I decided on the spur of a moment on a different route &#8212; down 522 from Winchester through Front Royal to Culpeper then down 29 through Charlottesville to Lynchburg.<\/p>\n<p>It was late afternoon as I went through the mountains.  They glowed in the waning sunlight of the day.<\/p>\n<p>Seeing the sliver of the moon as I headed down the highway, I could feel the enormity of the world.  Perhaps, had I not a destination, I could have fallen into the sky.<\/p>\n<p>I was glad I took the scenic route.  So many beautiful vistas!  So many charming little towns!<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"576\" height=\"904\" src=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Screenshot_20251222-092101.jpg\" alt=\"Google Maps overview of my route from York to Lynchburg\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-35002\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Somewhere south of Culpeper, just after sunset, a slim sliver of the moon hung in the wetern sky. I drove south to Lynchburg on a bit of a leisurely, scenic route. I started out as many of these trips start, heading north to Harrisburg then turning south down Interstate 81. I got off to a<a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=34994\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">&#8220;The Road Less Taken&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[5365,5364,5363,5366],"class_list":["post-34994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-blue-ridge-mountains","tag-charlottesville","tag-culpeper","tag-winchester","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34994\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}