We set out for home this morning. As I was packing the car, I noticed a huge moth on the window of the room next to ours. I had to think twice before sticking a camera up to the window of a hotel room that someone else was checked into, but I figured the huge moth would serve as an adequate alibi.

Huge moth, from the top

Huge moth, from the top


I have made no attempt at an id yet. Here it is again from the side:
Fat and juicy

Fat and juicy


I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a moth as fat and juicy looking as this one. I estimate the wing span at three inches, so its body was about the same diameter as my index finger.

We made good time, and made it all the way to Wythville, VA by about 6:00pm. We checked into a hotel, and told Beth about the giant pencil we knew was in town. I looked it up on the Internet, and saw that we were less than two miles from it (though there were no geocaches near it, which really surprised me). Beth and I got in the car and drove into town. We set up this shot:

Forced Perspective

Forced Perspective


Beth really liked the pencil. Here’s another perspective of it:
20 foot Pencil

20 foot Pencil


I almost wrote the caption as “20FT OIN” but that would not have made sense without an explanation. They are doing a bit of roadwork on the side roads surrounding I-81 in VA, and they warn truckers of this by noting the width of the roads on the signs. The first sign read “10FT OIN” all in one font. I didn’t get it at first, and was puzzling over its meaning. What is an oin? Maybe a letter fell of the sign? Loin doesn’t make any sense either, so it can’t be that. All of that flashed through my brain over the span of a couple hundred milliseconds before I realized that OIN was zero inches.

Duh…

The next two signs warned of an 11FT oin, and a 12FT oin. I guess the oins just get bigger and bigger the farther north one goes!