After a quick adventure through the tunnels, we were well and truly in the mountains.
West Virginia’s welcome sign describes the state as “wild and wonderful” and when it comes to the scenery on offer…they are not kidding.
We were treated to quite a few mountains and some of them were obscured by the clouds which made for interesting patterns against the side of the mountain.
We had no idea that the wild part of the journey was soon to come.
One of the disadvantages of the northerly routing we were forced to take with the closure of I-40 is the ever-increasing tolls for traveling along the West Virginia Turnpike which offers you up to three opportunities in each direction to take it in the shorts either with an EZ-Pass transponder or cold hard cash.
The hire car was supposed to be equipped with an EZ-Pass compatible transponder which would save you for fumbling for the cash for a rather sizeable daily fee. If my transponder wasn’t permanently attached to the windscreen, I’d have taken it with us and been done with it.
I didn’t see a hard-shell transponder or a sticker but didn’t really think about it because there are some transponders that mount on the number plate.
This would become critically important at the first northbound toll plaza when I’m going through the EZ-Pass and/or cash lane expecting the toll gantry to pick up the transponder and show us green for me to put my foot down and fight for my spot in the traffic jam after the plaza.
Only problem was that the toll gate didn’t go green so I stop to enquire as to how we should proceed from the gentleman in the booth.
This is where it gets more than a little bit wild because I’m asking him why the transponder isn’t kicking off the green light and he’s yelling at me that there isn’t a transponder on the car. I try to point out that I was told at RDU it did have a transponder but he’s very insistent there isn’t one.
So I ask him what he wants me to do and he seems to be of a mind that I should just go through the toll booth which seems to be an AWFULLY BAD IDEA if he’s right that this particular hire car somehow didn’t get a toll transponder fitted to it.
It doesn’t help at all that he’s got a very thick accent that unless I’m very much mistaken is commonly heard in Lagos, Nigeria.
At this point, there is an ever growing queue of people behind us who are awfully annoyed and I try a couple of times to get him to tell me what he wants me to do.
He tries telling me to just go through again but I’m really not in the mood to having a less-than-enjoyable conversation with the West Virginia state rozzers so we finally decide to pony up the cash just to get the hell away from him.
That seems to make the guy happy, the light goes green and we’re out of there and I suspect many instances of the most notorious digit on a person’s hand was brandished at us.
We’ve got some time until the next screwing so I ring up Avis and get the call centre in Bangalore and not only does the guy fail to confirm that the car has a transponder, he also takes a distressingly long time to grasp that I want him to put into the rental record that we had paid cash so we’re not expecting a bill wanting tolls to be paid on top of already having paid them!
As I’m telling him this, I realise I’d never gotten a receipt from our Excitable Nigerian Chap(tm) and I’m not sure we’d have gotten one from him even if we had asked.
Fortunately at the next plaza, I briefly mentioned the interesting experience we’d had a few miles prior and she and the gent in the booth with her have what looks like an amused and knowing smile and tells us she knows exactly who we’re referring to. She was kind enough to manually write out a receipt for the first toll as well as print the current one and we were on our way.
We figured the Excitable Nigerian Chap had rung ahead and probably told them we were trying to be deliberately obtuse to deliberately frustrate the toll collector so that they’d just wave us through for free which was *NOT* at all what we were trying to do. We were trying to avoid tickets for toll evasion and whatever else the constabulary could think up!
Fortunately, the last contribution to the West Virginia highway fund was pretty straightforward with a receipt in a very beautiful and scenic part of the Turnpike just before Charleston.
Once we were past Charleston and it’s beautiful Capitol building dome done in gold and blue and on the other side of Hurricane WV (rather ironic!), we had a pretty uneventful rest of the ride to our first stop in Georgetown KY just north of Lexington.
And joy of joys…the rooms had a built in jacuzzi tub which felt absolutely *WONDERFUL* after a long day’s driving! I could have stayed in it for hours but some sleep was necessary for the second leg of the journey towards the land of Lincoln! 🙂
