Travels with Serendipity: Forever and a Day

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!