Virginia in May

I know I haven't updated my blog in a long time, but I've either not been doing anything worth reporting or I've been too busy doing stuff to report. Anyway, here's some of what we did when we went to Virginia in May for Jared's graduation from the Virginia Commonwealth University Dental School.

It really struck me strongly when I heard the announcer state the first graduate's name, preceding it with "DOCTOR." Wow.





Chieko and I picked up Jared's mother, Suzanne, at the Baltimore airport and took her to Fort McHenry, the fort that flew the big (42 feet by 30 feet) flag as Fancis Scott Key sat in a ship offshore overnight and the British bombarded the fort all night during the War of 1812. Key and the residents of Baltimore couldn't see the flag during the night because the soldiers had taken it down and raised a small flag to protect the larger one, which was made by a local woman of wool. No one in Baltimore knew whether the small fort had held off the British during the night. The British had already invaded Washington and burned the White House, and Baltimore was to be next. What no one knew was that the British made no headway and gave up their bombardment. At 9 o'clock the next morning the soldiers in the fort did as they did every morning: they fired a gun and raised the 42'x30' U.S. flag with its 15 stars and 15 stripes.

We arrived at Ft. McHenry about an hour before closing time, so we got to help lower the new big flag and replace it with a smaller overnight flag.














In Richmond, Sara took us to the Chesterfield Strawberry Patch to pick our own strawberries. We also rode in a tractor-pulled wagon to the patch, and Jackson and Tanner played in a giant galvanized tub filled with dried corn.















Chieko and I also visited Mt. Vernon, George Washington's beloved home.















And we went to Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home. Notice this view of his home is on older nickels. This is called the "nickel view." (You likely won't see these people on most nickels.)















Appomattox is the tiny town where General Robert E. Lee's army was finally surrounded by General Ulysses S. Grant's army, and General Lee surrendered in a home here. This Confederate soldier told us about his war experiences in Petersburg, where four train lines converged and fed Richmond, the Confederate capital. Lee decided that rather than attack the well-protected Richmond, he'd attack Petersburg and cut off supplies. The Confederate soldiers held the Union in a deadlock for a long time in Petersburg, but the Union was finally able to cut off the train lines, and Lee marched his army toward North Carolina, where he hoped to catch up with another Confederate army. Grant's army was quicker, though, and cut him off here at Appomattox. Grant allowed Lee to surrender with dignity and gave each Confederate soldier a "parole," which was a pass that allowed him to return to his home.



Natural Bridge is in the Shenandoah Valley, near Lexington, Virginia (every state has a Lexington, it seems). The Indians believed the hole was cut to let their trapped ancestors escape other Indians, but it was really cut over millions of years by the small stream flowing through, maybe. George Washington surveyed here when he was a young surveyor, and his initials are carved in the wall of stone.









This is the Shenandoah Valley as seen from the Blue Ridge Parkway, part of Shenandoah National Park.








On the Monday after graduation, I headed out in this Penske truck with all of Jared, Sara, Jackson, and Tanner's household possessions. I generally headed on I-70, while Sara and gang took I-90 through Chicago and South Dakota. They left on Tuesday, after taking Chieko and Suzanne to the airport.

Jared bought a Garmin GPS, and I thought it looked like a great tool, so I bought one, too. It was great, especially for finding sightseeing spots in cities and Wal-Marts anywhere along the way. I decided to go to Lexington, North Carolina, on the way home to see the Lexington Furniture outlet store. I really like the Lexington Bob Timberlake Collection. It turns out the outlet store doesn't sell Bob Timberlake, but the manager told me about the Timberlake gallery, other outlet stores I should visit, including Thomasville, which is in Thomasville, NC, and the only manufacturer that still manufactures in the U.S., and he told me which BBQ place to go to for lunch. I think it was called Central BBQ, or something like that. It's what NC BBQ should be: vinegary pulled pork, with a tomato-based slaw that has no mayo. It was quite good.

Anyway, after Lexington, NC, I was headed to Lexington, Kentucky, to visit a Shaker village and get back on I-70. I had spent all day looking at furniture stores--and I bought a curio cabinet for our Japanese dolls at a freight-damage store--so I got a late start.

The GPS took me back into Virginia, then south to Tennessee, and through the Appalachian Mountains of Tennessee and Kentucky, through the Cumberland Gap, which Daniel Boone widened for pioneer wagons to pass. After taking an unplanned GPS-led detour up an old, overgrown highway that switched back and forth up a mountain and was not suitable for a big Penske truck pulling a car, I got to the Super 8 at 2:30 in the morning, only to find the hotel didn't have my Hotels.com reservation and was sold out. After some arm twisting, the guy decided maybe he had one room. That was an eventful night.

Many "highways" were narrow, 55 mph roads with no shoulder and mailboxes right at the road.















On Wednesday, I visited Shakertown, which is a restored Shaker village that was booming in the mid-1800s. The Shakers believed Christ had already come the second time and that the Millennium had started. Their responsibility was to create heaven on earth, and they called themselves Believers, not Shakers. They also were completely celibate, even though many converted as families. The dormitories have two doors, two sets of stairs and two of almost everything to keep the men and women apart. They got their name from locals who were intrigued by the way they danced enthusiastically ("sweeping out the bad" accompanied by sweeping motions, and "shaking off our sins" accompanied by shaking their dresses) during their services.















The Shakers made really nice furniture, and flat brooms, which were unique. They were also the first to package seeds for vegetables and flowers. They were very industrious. The mass-produced products that became available in the South from the North after the Civil War put the Shakers' hand-crafted products out of business, and the Shakers pretty much died out by the 1920s. There are three Shakers in Maine today.








In Louisville, Kentucky, I visited the Louisville Slugger factory, where they make 80 percent of all the professional baseball bats. I got to walk through the factory, see how commercial and professional bats are made. And I got a bat engraved with my name and the Boston Red Sox logo.













Thursday was Churchill Downs day.















I didn't plan to bet on any horses, but it looked like it was so much fun that I decided to put down $10.








I put $5 on a trifecta, which meant I had to name the first three horses that would finish in the right order. As the horses rounded the corner, they were almost in the order I needed to win BIG. The Number 2 horse just had to pass the number 4 horse, and he was gaining. It was getting pretty exciting! Until the Jockey fell off the number 2 horse in the corner.















In the last race I bet $5 on the horse with the longest odds (in other words, the worst chances of winning), and thus the best payoff if he won. This picture doesn't show just how far behind my horse finished all the others. I was watching the horses cross the finish line through the camera viewfinder. After they all passed, I noted that I hadn't seen my horse, so I pulled the camera away. What I saw was that he was still running, if you can call it that.















I stayed outside St. Louis, Missouri, and the next day drove Jared's red Ford (that's what I used for sightseeing) into St. Louis. I rode the little tram up into the top of the Gateway Arch, after waiting in line about two hours with about 500 Dream Girls USA girls of all ages (3 to 80, I think). They were there for a weekend national competition. A girl and her mother from Florida were in my tram, along with a couple from Scotland who said Utah was their favorite state.






Below is the view of St. Louis from the top of the arch.














In Kansas City, MO, I ate BBQ dinner at Arthur Bryant's, the one in the industrial district, not the one in the huge casino--the atmosphere is as important as the food. It was good, but it tasted a bit too much like chili. And way more rib tips and fries than I could possibly eat in one meal.



In Topeka, Kansas, I stayed in a Motel 6 next to a Home Depot. When I got to my room I found the door had already been jimmied with a crowbar a few times. I couldn't tell whether the robbers had been successful getting in the previous times.












Driving across Kansas was windy and slow. It was Saturday, and there were quite a few cars on the road, but I couldn't figure where they were all going. Did they gather up the kids and say, "Let's go, kids. We're going to drive down to Farmer Bob's and look at his cows ruminate for a while." Then I stopped in a little town to find a new adapter for my iPod, and I discovered where everyone was going: Wal-Mart.








I got to Austins' about 5 p.m. on Saturday and decided to visit until about 10 p.m. and then head home so I could drive across at least part of Wyoming at night, when the wind might not be so strong. We celebrated Emi's third birthday. Then visited. I left about 1 a.m., and I got to Wyoming just as the sky was starting to get light in the east.















I slept about 45 minutes at a rest stop near Laramie and got home about 1:3o p.m. I had driven about 2,500 miles (and ate up about $1,500 in diesel fuel). Although I'd taken that big truck up a narrow mountain road in Kentucky, as well as hundreds of miles of other narrow roads, got off the freeway in the very early morning in Wyoming and got stuck (and unstuck) trying to turn the truck around on a two-lane road, I had avoided putting any new scratches on the truck and hadn't even as much as pulled Jared's car over a curb. When I finally got home I pulled over to the curb in front of our house, let out a sigh, and took out a huge branch from our tree. It crashed down just missing Jared's car, and covered the entire road. Vince, our next-door neighbor, watched the whole thing and offered to let me put the branch in the back of his truck, which he was preparing to take to the dump. I got out the chain saw, and within 15 minutes--while everyone else was in church--we removed all evidence of my misdeed (other than a big empty spot on the tree). The truck didn't seem worse for the impact.