In November 2011 we visited my wife’s sister who was living in Virginia, USA at the time. During the visit we had use of her car if we wanted it so on one of the days I borrowed it and my wife and I went for a drive to Shenandoah National Park.
This was my first time driving in America and my first time driving on the right hand side of the road making for not the least stressful of journeys but we reached the park without incident and drove along the Skyline Drive stopping frequently at the various lay-bys to take photos. We noticed that we were the only people getting out of our cars to take pictures whereas other visitors (not that there were many) seemed content to drive in, park up, then take pictures from through their car windows.
There was one incident, though.
As we were driving along the winding road we came across an area of roadworks on our side of the road with temporary traffic lights. We duly waited until the light went green then filtered through and around the bend. We reached the end of the roadworks and carried on as before looking out at the views and making appropriate ooh and aah sounds. Several minutes and a couple of miles later I suddenly realised I’d not switched lane back to the right hand side and had been driving on the wrong side of the road up and down hills and around sharp bends for quite some time. A quick tug on the steering wheel and some innocent whistling ensued.
A processed image of one of the spectacular views of Shenandoah National Park from the Skyline Drive.
