Everyone's a Stranger Here

I moved to a town that is about thirty miles from Washington DC three months ago.  Having spent most of my life in California, I expected to have the same type of culture shock that I experienced during the year I lived in North Carolina, but also the joy of learning about the culture of another state (I lived in a military town, but there were plenty of locals there).  For some reason, I thought that living outside of DC, I would meet some Virginians.  I haven’t yet…  I do have a great appreciation for my fellow transplants – who have always been ready with a recommendation or an offer to show me various places in the DC Metro Area.  But I miss the luxury of locals who can tell me where the best of everything is located, because my new home is their original hometown.

I have been trying to become less dependent on my GPS (since it isn’t always reliable here - see our Getting Lost post), but I still can’t find my way around this place.  If you were to ask me for directions to the nearest grocery store, I could take you there, but I couldn’t tell you the street names.  This is an area where there are multiple ways to get everywhere that, depending on traffic, could all take the same amount of time.  Just yesterday, my housemate and I decided to take a different route to the grocery store (meaning ignoring the Garmin’s directions, but keeping it on just in case we got completely lost).  My housemate decided to stay on city streets and avoid the highway.  It was a nicer drive with less traffic, took the same amount of time and helped us completely bypass a very dangerous merge that we both loathe.  But I digress. 

I have lived in nine cities in California (both Northern and Southern) and even one place in North Carolina, briefly.  Between my immediate family members, I’ve found my way around a city in Texas, one in Utah and another in Italy.  After years of short visits to Utah, I can probably navigate around Salt Lake City (the nearest big city to one family member's home) a lot better than anywhere in the DC Metro Area.  The problem is that I live here and I’ve already been here long enough that I feel I should know my way around.

I can usually figure out just enough to be dangerous (to myself, mostly) within a month.  Moving around so much and having family in so many different places has made me, not so much adventurous, as just determined to know where all the necessary businesses, buildings, parks, etc., are.  I’m a fan of being able to get around on my own, even if it ends up not being necessary.

The DC Area, at least the part in Northern Virginia, confounds me.  Although North Carolina also has that sort of southern sprawl (so different from most cities on the West Coast), I never accidentally drove out of the city I lived in and didn’t realize I was somewhere else.  Here I feel like I’m not entirely sure which city I’m in half the time and I don’t know that my GPS does, either.  To make matters worse, it seems like everything has at least two names, if not more.  So when you’re looking for a place in Tyson’sCorner, it’s really in the city of McLean.  And if you’re wondering where Harry Byrd Highway is while you’re driving on Virginia State Route 7, well – you’re already on it.  Now I’m not saying I’ve never been anywhere where street or highway names didn’t change while you were still on them.  What I’m telling you is that it seems like almost every street here has a number it’s also known by and every route and highway has a name to go with its number.  Unfortunately, in my experience, the GPS often gives you the one you are not seeing on the signs you’re driving by.

It’s disconcerting, to say the least.  But I have a plan.  I admit that it’s been slow to evolve, but I also have to say that I’ve been more motivated lately because writing for Lost in DC provides me with an excuse to help myself, by the possibility of making something useful for others.

I’m New Here, Myself…

What I wish I had done when I first moved here, instead of assuming that my housemate or one of his friends would be able to tell me where things were, is this:

Sit down and write a short list of places you’d like to find.  For example: a grocery store, a pharmacy, the nearest gas station, a coffee shop and a post office.  From there, you can map it out (you can do this online, you don’t have to pour over an atlas first) so that you can either (a) take a really long drive all over town, finding the places on your list (and seeing everything else that’s out there) or (b) find an area that has the highest density of what you want and explore just that one area.  It is tempting to have someone else drive you around and show you places, but I’ve found that doing the driving myself helps me remember how to get to those places.  This is also best to do on a weekday, in the late morning, so that you don’t have to deal with traffic of any kind.

The Long Way ‘Round…

I finally decided to do Option A (the long way) this past weekend and I discovered two things.  First, that the Best Buy I’m always being dragged to is right across the street from the local WalMart.  It faces a different direction, so it was hard to see from the shopping center that Best Buy is in.  I didn’t know this town even had a WalMart.  Now, you may be saying to yourself that you couldn’t care less where the WalMart is.  But keep this in mind – you’re not just looking for the places you want to go, you’re also looking for landmarks.  If you ask where something is and the stranger you asked tells you it’s near the WalMart, you’ll be real glad you knew where it was.  So what was I saying? 

Oh yes, the second thing I discovered is that my town does, in fact, have a TJ Maxx.  This may not seem surprising to you, but it just so happens that the first thing I looked up upon arriving here was the location of a TJ Maxx.  And I did not find one.  My GPS said it didn’t exist and when I looked up “TJ Maxx/my location” online, I got a long list that started with Richmond, VA (which is nowhere near me).  I scrolled down a little, but stopped at the 20^th location.  Guess what?  Mine was #24 on the store locator list (I know this only because I just looked it up).  Obviously I could have tried harder and found that it did in fact exist, but I honestly thought nothing of it.  Not that I wasn’t mightily disappointed.  So, imagine my surprise, when I drove right by it on my way to WalMart.

WalMart, you guys.  You don’t have to shop there, but you should know where it is. 

Cancel that, you totally don’t have to know where the WalMart is, but you get the general idea.  Big landmarks will help you find your way around later.

After you’ve done your recon, you should have a slightly better idea of the layout of the city or town you now live in.  And, hopefully, you’ve seen a couple of other places you’re either glad to know the location of or that you want to go back to. 

Before the WalMart incident, I had done this kind of recon trip, but only in other parts of Virginia.  Sometimes, when you have little to do and very little money to speak of, it’s nice to just go drive places.  So far, I have a decent idea of how these Virginian cities are laid out and what I’d like to see or do when I go back:


Leesburg: Cute historic downtown, a nice little beautyboutique and a bunch of historic sites and seasonal attractions.


Round Hill:  Found a place with great pie and a place with great wine, right next to each other and just off the same route that goes through my town.


Bluemont: Pretty, but didn't see anything to go back for at the time, now I realize they have a couple of vineyards, so I'm definitely going back.

Shenandoah National Park/Front Royal:  Only a two hour drive from me, something to do when the family visits and it’s warm enough to enjoy.   Also found a great burger place, Spelunker's (there are caverns nearby), on the way out of the park.

All this reconnaissance and writing lists may seem like a complete waste of time to you, it certainly does to my housemate (“That’s what your Garmin is for!”), but if you’re feeling a little lost, this is one way to get a firmer grip on your surroundings.  

Have a tried and true technique for finding your way around a new place that you would love to share with others?  Contact us or leave a comment on this post.