My Trip to Roanoke Virginia

Well I am a week removed from my business trip to Roanoke, and I know you were all waiting on the edge of your seat to find out what this image I posted last Tuesday was all about.

Well just hold onto your britches! There's more on that to come. But we have to start back at the beginning.

My trip from Cincinnati to Roanoke is chronicled here: https://steemit.com/travel/@mikepm74/my-journey-from-cincinnati-to-roanoke. An entertaining read about the typical airport misery that we all go through.

Then you can go and visit the pictures of the Hotel Roanoke, built in 1882 and for sure haunted. I posted my pictures as part of Ricky's Photo Challenge, so you can check those out here: https://steemit.com/rickysphotochallenge/@mikepm74/rickysphotochallenge-week-11-entry-architecture-hotel-roanoke

So that brings us to what I was actually doing in Roanoke in the first place. I was attending a conference of Motorcoach Operators from North and South Carolina and Virginia. I work for a large attraction here in Tennessee, and we go to these shows where Tour Operators meet and give them the latest information on our attractions and let them know what we offer for Tour Groups who are thinking of Nashville as a Destination.

Part of the Conference is a City Tour. The city is selling itself to the Tour Operators too, but one of the perks of being a supplier is we still get to enjoy the city even though we aren't sending our clients there.

By the time I got signed up for the conference all of the regular tours had filled, so my options were a "Shop till you drop" tour, or the motorcoach Golf Tournament. Not being much of a shopper, and enjoying swinging clubs at small innocent balls, it sounded like golf was for me. So I signed up, and after my appointments on Monday Morning, I boarded a coach with 23 new friends and headed to Hidden Valley Country Club. This is a members only course that is typically closed on Monday.

They opened just for us! There were 24 of us, with a Shotgun Start, puttering around the course.

It is an absolutely gorgeous course with the Blue Ridge Mountains in the background. As a guy who normally plays pitch and putt with my son, it was a really challenging course, and I knew going in I would need some extra golf balls. I lost 7 of the 9 that I took with me. Even some that I was sure I knew where they had gone managed to elude me as I tried to find them in the rough.

Unfortunately, I didn't win any prizes for being a crappy golfer. So that was unfortunate. But after a nice round of golf with some nice folks, we headed back to the hotel and got a shower before dinner.

Now we get to talk about the pinball machines. These were part of our dinner reception at "Center in the Square". Dinner itself was served on a rooftop veranda looking over downtown Roanoke, which was pretty cool. But the fun part of the evening was four floors down on the second floor, where there is a Pinball Machine Museum.

There are probably close to 100 pinball machines in this place, spanning the ages. I really should have taken more pictures, but 80% of the machines were operational and in free play mode for us, so I spent my time playing! They had everything from the oldest of the old machines with barely any bumpers at all, to some newer stuff from the early 2000's with all the bells and whistles. I never imagined such a collection.

I suck at pinball as badly as I do at golf, but I had a blast going from machine to machine and trying to hit the specials and mystery prizes. I had a lot of fun with it. And of course, being a Doctor Who Fan, I had to spend some time with this one:

Tuesday it was back to work, with a day full of appointments and a nice closing reception, but we didn't leave the hotel, so no fun and exciting things to share from that. Wednesday was the same as my trip to Roanoke, but in reverse. Same tiny plane from Roanoke to Washington DC. In Fact, I am pretty sure I had the same flight crew for it.

I did capture a slightly better picture of the little prop plane I flew on this time.

It did get me safely to DC and then a proper jet took me back to Nashville. So all was well.

Roanoke was certainly interesting. Probably not somewhere I am planning to take the family on vacation or anything, but interesting nonetheless. I do hope you enjoyed passing through it with me!

Have a wonderful day! Steem on!