Travels with Serendipity: July 2014

STORIES DELAYED ARE STORIES DENIED...

Wow, it’s been a long time again since my last blog. Let’s see… we were in Virginia, visiting presidents homes, right? In West Virginia I fell ill with a tic borne illness, Larry knew I was very ill when I didn't even care to go to the Virginia Quilt Museum. He dragged me there anyway, thinking somehow he'd be blamed later if we didn't stop. But by that afternoon I collapsed in a heap with flu like symptoms - shivering, exhaused, dehydrated) and after a day in urgent care getting antibiotics and fluids pumped into me and then several phone calls from the West Virginia doctors on our way when my blood tests straggled in, 4 visits in total to urgent cares across 3 states, 3 visits to WalMart for drugs, one bad reaction to Doxycycline, ( I’m leaving a trail across the country!) It took several days to overcome the effects of the illness, but I finally got back on track about Ohio and have been improving ever since although I was still dragging in at the end of the day, sometimes collapsing on the couch while Larry bless his soul, set up the trailer solo. Lucky for you, Larry took no photos!

Christmas Quilt from the Virginia Quilt Museum

I have the makings of at least 4 blogs in my mind now that I'm back on full drive, not get through the day and survive mode– here’s a preview:

Since West Virginia, we’ve been to Pennsylvania to visit Fort Necessity – George Washington’s defeat against the French and the second engagement of the French and Indian War, and the sight of the National Road Museum. And very close by was Falling Water … a Frank Lloyd Wright house built over a small waterfall. Then we were on to Ohio – Cambridge, a small town not known for much, but Larry’s Dad Willard was born there and some of the Stevens and Merciers hung around a while so we did some genealogy research, and we went on a wild goose chase in Monroe county for barn paintings… it turned out to be quite a story!

From Ohio we bounced down to Springfield for a Lincoln fix, the new Lincoln Museum and upgraded Lincoln House sites were great! One of my 1^st cousins, once removed (impressed aren’t you?LOL) lives in Springfield so we visited Pat and Melge one evening and reminisced about Pat’s childhood in Jamestown and Beckemeyer. I got a little more genealogy information out of it as well. We were slated to head down to St. Louis from there but the trip didn’t happen, Erla – another cousin was busy and Larry’s drill was in Springfield Mo not St. Louis, so we headed east instead across the flooded Mississippi to Hannibal, which was partly underwater – but not the old town, thank goodness! – to see Mark Twain’s childhood home. It was a pretty good museum, the town is ALL about Mark Twain and we learned a lot about the origins of his Mark Twain and Huckleberry Finn characters.

Next was a move north to the Amana Colonies and Herbert Hoover’s boyhood home. Again fighting swollen rivers to get there. I can’t help but think that with all the technology we have to build oil pipelines we could find a way to siphon off the overflow water and send it to the areas in the west stricken by drought. Water wouldn’t even pollute the land if it broke out of its pipe!

I fell in love with Herbert Hoover. What a great man! and maligned president and the Amana Colonies, close by his Quaker community were a revelation. And a place I succumbed to my crafting obsession, buying the makings of 3 quilts and two wall hangings. Now I have to relearn my sewing machine and get to work ;)

We are heading home, slowly. Yesterday we spent the day celebrating Railroad Days in Omaha with half the city, it was a great day. We didn’t even know it was on, we just showed up at the gardens for a tour and found ourselves enveloped in trains and model trains and gardens too! Today we are heading into Lincoln for our last touring stop … we are collecting capitol buildings and there’s a quilt museum I have to see. Then it’s a two day 10 hour drive straight through to Monument. There’s bridge to be played, doctors to be visited, bills to be paid and always another trip to prepare for!

Hi there! Bet you thought we went one mile too far on our journey across the belt of the United States and dropped off the edge of the earth!

It did seem that way. We left the Smokey Mountains to drive up the Blue Ridge Parkway... from one beautiful place to another. But while the Smokey's have rivers and mountains and views, the Blue Ridge Parkway is just green. Green, green and more green. Except for two stops... Mabry's Mill, the iconic picture of the Blue Ridge Parkway (with a very mediocre restaurant attached, by the way) and the Appalachian Music Visitor Center - where we were able to spend a very rainy afternoon in the covered walkway listening to local Bluegrass singers.... we have nothing to report. It's beautiful. It must be even more beautiful in the fall with all the trees changing color but we had our fill in the one day and night we were wandering through. We stayed at Fancy Gap, in the trees and if we thought internet service was bad last winter in Argentina.... here it is, if anything worse. Our Sirius XM didn't work either - trees.

Leaving the parkway behind, we headed to Charlottesville, VA for a dose of presidents. Of course there's Monticello - Jefferson's masterpiece but Madison and Monroe both had plantations within 30 miles of Charlottesville. And there's Woodrow Wilson's birthplace as well...in Staunton, VA. 30 miles out west. They lived in the manse, a rather nice home actually. Presbyterians expected a well educated minister and perhaps the reward in Staunton at least was a very nice home to live in. The church even provided them with rented slaves as servants - only a cook and a workman, but a big help for the Reverand and Mrs Wilson, I'm sure. Tommy didn't live there long, his father was a Presbyterian minister who was asked to go to Alabama in the middle of the Civil War, but Staunton claims him none the less. Tommy? Woodrow was Thomas Woodrow Wilson's middle name, but he decided in college he liked it better and never used Tommy, or Tom, again. More formal, I guess.

What to say about Monticello? It's a beautiful creation but built on the backs of Jefferson's slaves. For a man who wrote the Declaration of Independence I find a bitter taste in my mouth that he freed only a few slaves - a daughter who went to Maryland and "passed" so no records survive and two sons who were freed on his death. One former slave wrote he had no idea he was a slave as a child as his parents had been house slaves and he had been to young to be put to work, but upon Jefferson's death he found himself and his family on the sales block and swore he would never be sold again - he would find a way to buy his freedom.

Lafayette an old friend from the war days visited Jefferson in his later years and asked why he still had not freed his slaves as he had sworn to do. Jefferson, the fiery revolutionary shrugged his shoulders and said "it's not time yet." to which Lafayette responded "if not now, when?"

Madison's estate was deeply in debt at his death as well and his plantation -Montpelier - was sold as well as most of the belongings - he willed his papers to his wife Dolly, hoping she could sell them to make enough to live on. Montpelier had several owners and was added on to several times by the new owners. It is now in the hands of a conservancy and they are working hard to replace it to it's original state.

Monroe was the only frugal one of the bunch. He owned two estates and put both of them on the market after he left the presidency. Ashlawn - the more modest of the two sold first, so he moved into the other one. It's now owned by The College of William and Mary - Monroe's Alma Mater and because it was owned by only one family and not tinkered with too much, most of the original furnishings are intact. Including a bust of Napoleon and a picture of the Queen of Holland - who happened to live with the Monroe's for a while during their sojourn as ambassador to France, her parents being imprisoned and her father executed during the revolution. She later married Napoleon's brother and they were given Holland as a wedding present.

Then there's the wine tasting - on our way back from Madison's Montpelier we had to try some. I'm not a white drinker, so I was somewhat whelmed but Larry assures me the two white wines he bought are quite good. Our KOA was strategically placed and we spent three nights resting and plotting our next presidential visit... but their wi-fi service was wretched as well. Maybe it was just Virginia? Or maybe it is just my pc dying slowly on me.

Enough for now, I don't want to totally bore you to tears. But I will try to upload some pictures, what's a boring old blog without pictures? And we'll bring you up to date on the next few legs of our journey... Larry's visit to Antietum , Patrice's decline into severe flu like symptoms and subsequent visit to urgent care, our visit to Fort Necessity, PA and Falling Water. Cambridge Ohio and the quilt barn trek, and finally Dayton ... which is where we are today!