Monticello in the Rain

Wednesday, October 12th.  It rained most of last night and we were still getting bombarded by acorns.  It was quite overcast when we got up and both the parkways were in thick fog.  So we drove to Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson.  Monticello is located just outside of Charlottesville, a beautiful old city.

Jefferson originally had 8000 acres and it took him almost 40 years to complete the house as we see it today.  It's about 6100 square feet and is very well appointed.  Lots of unique finishing touches that Jefferson thought of himself.  He has a huge library and most of the books are in one of the 6 other languages he spoke besides English.  His wife died during childbirth in 1779.  They had two daughters.  One of them never lived at Monticello.  The other had 11 children and the whole brood moved to the estate.  Jefferson died in 1826.  There is a family cemetary on the property.  Anyone that is a documented decendent of Jefferson can be buried there.  There are currently 2000 such people living today.

The home was designed to take advantage of the great views of the Blue Ridge Mountains.  But you could barely see beyond the parking lot today.

Goodbye Pennsylvania

Tuesday, October 11th.  This morning we got up and said goodbye to Gettysburg and Pennsylvania.  We headed south into Virginia.   Our drive was along the western border of the state and we actually visited 4 states today...Penn., Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia.   Our destination was a campground near Waynesboro.  After we set up, we went into Waynesboro to do some grocery shopping (they had a Kroger's store).  The town itself seems to be quite distressed.  Things seemed quite old and runned down.  A very sad tone to the town.  But it's at the gateway to the Skyline Drive and the Blue Ridge Pkwy, two of the most beautiful drives in the country.  We look forward to seeing them this week.

Touring Gettysburg II

Monday, October 10th.  In the morning we continued and concluded our tour of the battlefield.  On our way back to the campground we came across a fruit stand that had apples.  We told them we were from Washington and knew good apples.  We continued that thus far on the trip we have not found a decent apple (mushy and tart).  They offered us a Winesap, a variety that we haven't seen in Washington.  The apple was just what we liked, both in crispiness and tartness.  We bought a small bushel to accompany us as we continue our trip.

historic street scene minus traffic signal

Pennsylvania monument, the largest

note bulletholes...over 100

In the afternoon we walked around downtown Gettysburg.  Many of the buildings  were there during the battle.  You can see the marks in the walls from bullets.  Confederate troops occupied many buildings and their sharpshooters were able to shoot at union troops.  At some times there was fighting in the streets and remarkably only one civilian was killed.  A young woman named Jenny Wade, who was baking bread in her kitchen when a stray bullet came thru the window.  It's hard to imagine that such things happened in a small town in the USA.

Lancaster to Hershey

Sunday, October 9th.  We awoke again to a beautiful, sunny day.  Because it was a holiday weekend and Gettysburg was so crowded, we decided to visit Lancaster (Amish country) and Hershey (chocolate country).

A wall mural in Intercourse

There are a group of small towns in the area of Lancaster where Amish folks live.  Two of those are Intercourse, PA and Bird-in-Hand, PA.  Unfortunately, because it was Sunday, many of the Amish owned stores were closed.  But we saw their handiwork in beautiful quilts, weavings and knitting.  We also saw Amish men driving horse-drawn carriages down the roadways.  A very unusual and interesting sight.

We then drove to Hershey, PA.  It's a very nice town and appears to be a modern day 'company town'.  Besides the huge factory, there's a museum, a visitors' center where they explain how chocolate is made and a full fledged amusement park.  And those are all facilities for tourists.  Hershey has also done many improvements for the community in the form of parks, public works and other community facilities.

We were amazed to find that Hershey makes so many varieties of candy beyond the chocolate we grew up with.  The visitor center includes a giant candy store featuring all the different types of candy and in all different sizes.  It was a quite fun and a sweet ending to the day.

Touring Gettysburg I

N. Carolina tribute monument

Saturday, October 8th.  As I described yesterday, there's so much Civil War information to see and digest all around Gettysburg...both in the city and around it.  We started out by going to the Visitor's Center to see what were the best ways to see all the sights.  We ended up purchasing a self guiding CD that takes you to all the high points of the 3-day battle.  It was interesting to see the locations where all the different troops were located and the strategy for moving to various locations.  There's so many monuments of different designs documenting the men from the various states who were there.  It was extremely sobering and awe-inspiring to see how many men were wounded and lost their lives

Troops 'manning' the cannons

We got about half way thru the CD tour and called it quits for the day and went back to the campground.  It was quite a day.

Traversing Pennsylvania

Friday, October 7th.  As we drove thru Penn. on our way to Gettysburg, we were impressed with the beauty of Pennsylvania.  Lots of rolling hills, farmland and changing colors on the trees.  As we approached Harrisburg, the capital, traffic became quite heavy.  We had to negotiate a beltway around the city to get to the correct road for Gettysburg.  We got to our Gettysburg exit at about 3 in the afternoon.  As we're driving on Taneytown Road to the campground, we saw many signs of the battle.  There were many monuments along the road indicating the location of troops from various states.  Also, signs documented many of the old farmhouses as being hospitals during and immediately after the battle.  Gettysburg was a town of about 2400 people at the time and they had to deal with about 25,000 wounded in the war.  That's on top of the 51,000+ that were killed during the battle.  But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

It turns out that this is Columbus Day weekend.  While that was not generally a holiday in Arizona or Washington, it sure is here.  The campground was 100% full and the City of Gettysburg was packed.  It turns out that this is the first sunny weekend after 4 rainy weekends in a row.  So everyone was enjoying the sunshine.  And we did too.

Leaving New England

Thursday, September 6th.    We awoke to windy, cloudy skies and took off for our trip around New York, making a wide circle to avoid New York City traffic.  For the most part traffic wasn't too bad.  We made it to Waldon, NY, which is the site of Waldon Pond inspiration.  A pretty area of small towns and rolling hills.  We're half way to Gettysburg.