So on that hot summer day I gathered together all of my knick knacks and trinkets (I'm an admitted pack rat), stuffed boxes and suitcases full of clothing, and loaded my pathetic collection of hand-me-down furniture into a UHaul. As I navigated the monstrous UHaul out of the quaint town of Hollidaysburg, PA I knew my life would never be the same.

You see, I've been a Pennsylvania girl for most of my life. I grew up in West Chester, a suburb of Philadelphia and the home of West Chester University. I then spent four years in Pittsburgh playing lacrosse at Duquesne University, and developing a passion for Steelers football. After a brief stint in upstate New York for graduate school, I returned to the Keystone State to work at WTAJ-TV in Altoona, PA.

Altoona is a small city of about 50,000 people nestled between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh. Our television station reached out across hundreds of miles of rural Pennsylvania… from the farmlands in the south, through Penn State's Blue and White country to the north, and the city of Johnstown to the west. Many communities in Central PA are filled with older, working class people who love small town life. They don't have to deal with serious crime (there are less than a handful of murders in Altoona every year), and if they want to go to a city Pittsburgh is only 90 miles away. There aren't beaches nearby, but there are ski slopes and hiking trails. There aren't any professional sports teams in Central PA, but the people of Altoona bleed black and gold during football season, and crowd into local ballparks to cheer on the minor league baseball teams in the area.

So as I drove south on the highway, I knew my life in Virginia would be much different than the life I'd lived in small town America for two years. But different is good. I like change. So as I looked in the rear view mirror to make sure my belongings weren't flying out the back of the UHaul, and caught my last glimpse of the ridges of the Alleghenies, I took a deep breath and got ready for my adventure in Hampton Roads....

(stay tuned for my thoughts and observations of this wonderful place I now call home)