Visiting Beau (Part I)

So, on Veteran's Day weekend, I finally went to go visit Beau in prison. Not your every day kind of visit, but it was good seeing him after all this time (3 years!).

I started out Friday, around noon, and it was a nice, rsunny day, a little windy but not cold or anything. The GPS took me the back way through Virginia up to Charlottesville, and it is really pretty that way, a lot of horse country and leaves still changing, etc. I went that way one other time with Vickie when we went to Thomas Jefferson's Monticello and really enjoyed it then also. Now, I don't mind driving it in the daytime, but knew I wasn't on the way back when it was going to be dark, as it is only 1 two-lane road, and probably an even better chance to encounter a deer or two, which I didn't want to do.

Anyway, once I hit 64, it was freeway (and splattered deer....yuck!) all the way into Knoxville, and pretty much all mountains, too. Mountains or not, I did see a couple of Starbucks signs, and I stopped at the one in Wytheville (I had already mapped that on though on my phone through my Starbucks app). See?

After getting my Sb fix, I drove on to Knoxville and arrived at my hotel around 9pm. I stayed at the Sleep Inn, which I won't do again, because my room was not the greatest to say the least. On the bright side, there was a Starbucks within view of the hotel, so all was not lost. :-)

I got up early the next morning, stopped at Starbucks (duh!) and had their oatmeal and my drink, and then I was on my way up to Pine Knot, Ky, which is about 80 miles away. The drive wasn't too bad, all major freeway, more mountains, more splattered deer. (Yikes! Made me paranoid about hitting one.) I got up to Williamsburg, Ky, and then I had to go on a windy, two-lane road further up in the mountains, and then even my GPS got lost there. It was saying things like "Are we there yet?" and "This is no way to treat a trusted confidante.....recalculating" and then it told me to turn left....and the only thing on my left was a big mountain! Geez!

Finally I made it to Pine Knot, and the GPS instructed me turn down a road, so I did, and about a mile in, it informed me I was there. Huh? A trailer on my right is a Federal Penitentiary? Ummmm....I don't think so. I turned around and drove a little and there was a guy in his yard, so I stopped and asked him where it was and he gave me the directions, which put me right there (and believe me, it was a lot different than that trailer! Lots and lots and LOTS of razor-sharp barbed wire surrounding the place.) Yay!

Or not. When I went in, I was told nope, you have to wait till 11 (it was 10am). Ok, fine. Oh, and you can't wait in the parking lot. So I drive away and find this little cafe and wait there till 11, and I drive back. Nope, gotta wait 10 more minutes. Waited. Nope, there was an "incidence" (i.e a guy got stabbed) so now we have to wait an hour. By this time there are a group of us waiting and we could have had a tailgate party while waiting. Sheesh.

But at about 12:15 they finally let us in, and we had to fill out paperwork, put anything we had with us in a locker, then take off our shoes and go through a scanner. For a minute I thought I was in an airport and was going somewhere, except I didn't have anything with me. They stamped our hands with a flourescent image (I'm going clubbing) and we had to show it under lights a couple of times to guards. The guard took us outside and into the prison yard and then into another building, where our hands were scanned again and then we were seated in specific spots and waited. Twenty minutes later Beau finally came out and he was so happy to see me. (He had been thinking that since half the day had gone by that I hadn't shown up; but while waiting outside I had called Sean Michael to tell him what was going on so that if Beau called, he could tell him I was there.)

Anyway, after all that, it was just so good to see him. His hair was longer than usual and he did kinda have this Charles Manson kinda look going on, but he was still Beau. A very depressed Beau, but still Beau. He told me interesting things about life in prison, like how they have "pets"........like, mice and praying mantises and spiders and the occasional snake. I asked him how they could keep "pets" like that in their cells, and he said they use coffee cans or cups, etc. And apparently praying mantises are the "In" pet to keep there. Who knew, right?

Visitation was only until 3, and those 2 1/2 hours went by pretty quickly, but I promised Beau I would get these by 0830 on Sunday so that I would be able to spend the day with him this time. The hardest part of leaving there was leaving him behind and he looked pretty sad as I was leaving. But at least we had the next day to look forward too.

I drove away from there feeling sad for him and wishing he wasn't in there. Wishing his life had turned out differently, wishing I had made his life different. But I guess wishing is like hindsight, it's 20/20 too.