Numbers seven, nine, and ten

Here, in no particular order, is a bundle of photos of the North Carolina grandchildren: Elsie, Gabe, and Victoria.

Annie doesn't stand for any nonsense and her children say "Yes, Ma'am" in the best southern tradition. They also frequent the "time out" corner quite regularly. One day, there happened to be a pink bag in the corner when G was sent there, with this result.

Victoria is colicky and cries a lot, but when she is happy she is most delightful. Nana spent many hours rocking and walking and playing with her. 

And sometimes falling asleep with her.

Annie and I took the kids shopping one morning. We left Jeff at home, because he hates shopping. Our first stop was an antiques and collectibles store that was closed, but had most of its inventory outside, so we had an impromptu photo shoot.

This is E's "photo face". You have to be tricky to get anything else from her. Which is funny, because my mum, her namesake, had a photo face too.

One hot afternoon, Annie set up the little pool and the older two had a blast. I love their expressions of pure delight.

Papa and I took the kids for several walks around the neighbourhood, giving Mommy some peace while she taught piano lessons. The kids usually ended up pushing their own strollers, in a sneaky effort of ours to wear them out.

Annie belongs to a co-op preschool with some other moms. Elsie looks forward to it all week.

Papa doing his part and keeping the baby quiet. This wee one will not sleep unless her thumb is firmly planted in her mouth.

Papa and E "played" Battleships one day. In reality, E filled every hole with pegs and then took them out and put them away in the right places. It took a long time!

E helped me make cookies, the lazy way, with a brownie mix.

Getting ready go play out in front of the house.

G hops on the riding lawn-mower every time he goes out to the garage.

E and I put this outfit together and we thought it was cool.

Mommy was not impressed.

V has the funniest expressions and her smile is so contagious.

Like most young moms today, Annie is on the go a lot. E usually sits in the back very quietly, staring into space.

G is also very good, although he does mess with the baby sometimes.

Look at that innocent expression. Butter wouldn't melt in his mouth!

And the babe is a car-seat riding tyrant. These are some of the few moments when she wasn't screaming like she was dying of some horrible pain.

E loves to read books with Papa, who behaved himself nicely and didn't mess with the plot.

And now this Nana is feeling quite bereft, not knowing how long it will be before we see these darlings again, but also grateful that we spent these few precious days with them and Annie. 

And that, dear reader, is the end of our traveling for a while. Hope you enjoyed the journey.

Monticello and the Natural Bridge

Thomas Jefferson has long been one of my heroes. He wasn't a perfect man, but he was awesome for his time.

Here I am with TJ. He is tall. And he is aloof.

We had stopped in Byoona Vista, as I mentioned earlier, to visit our old friends Etta and John. We drove down to Monticello on Tuesday morning. Luckily, the house is owned by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation (a mighty good concept, if you ask me) and not the Federal Government, as the government shut-down that morning prevented us from visiting Appomattox.

Here we are. I think I am telling the volunteer how to work the camera.

 I was kind of "ho hum" about the whole thing, although I didn't let on, because old houses are only so thrilling, in my book. As it turned out, it was a fascinating look into the brain of old TJ. 

Take, for instance, the entrance to the home. Note the compass in the ceiling and the great clock on the wall, which was designed by TJ. It has two faces, one facing the fields outside, thus serving the field workers as well as the inhabitants of the house. It struck a gong on the hour and doesn't have minute hands. Each section between the numbers is divided into quarters and then into five-minute increments. 

The hall served as a reception room and waiting room for visitors, as well as a museum of American natural history, western civilization, and American Indian cultures.

The house is full of Jefferson's innovations, but photos are not allowed. I did, however, sneak this one of the kitchen, because I do love a well-stocked kitchen.

Houses were not commonly built so high up on a hill in Jefferson's time, but he loved the view and figured out a way to do it. You can understand why he craved the peace and beauty of this view.

There is a dig in progress in the slave quarters. It looked like a fun job on this sunny afternoon.

We walked along the gardens on the way back to the bus and I was quite taken with these snake-like squash.

And I may or may not have filched a few corn seeds along the way.

The front of the house, which looks almost identical to the back.

I could go on for hours about Jefferson and all of his cleverness in the house and the gardens, but I am feeling lazy, so you will have to visit there yourself. 

We couldn't resist a photo in the magnificent linden tree at the entrance to Monticello. I believe this was a young tree in Jefferson's time.

We stopped off at the graveyard on the way down to the visitors' center. A couple of gravestones caught my eye.

I want this on our stone when we die.

And this one made me a little sad.

We stopped at Michie Tavern for some lunch/dinner. It was very delicious and strangely served as a buffet for the first helping, but then you had to tell a waiter when you wanted seconds of anything and they were supposed to bring it to you. Not very satisfactory, because you can see what happened when I asked the waiter for some more cornbread, specifying that I wanted a middle piece, not the ends.

I tried to hail him to see why he brought me some dried-out old ends, when we saw him out of the window, high-tailing it down a path towards the shops. I had to find someone else to get me some more cornbread, and she was a bit indignant and defensive of the original waiter. When he came back, he toddled over to our table and apologized, saying that he thought I asked for the ends, and then giving us a sad story about having to buy some new shirts for his job and how expensive they were.

Um, don't want to hear, closing my ears now!

We drove back to Byoona Vista and said our farewell to John and Etta, and headed for the Natural Bridge, which was high on my list of priorities to visit. 

We arrived at five o'clock, only to find that the attractions were closed and the only thing we could visit was the bridge. We were okay with that, so here we are.

In 1774, Jefferson bought 157 acres (including the natural bridge) from King George of England for twenty shillings. I heard somewhere that it equals about $1,200 in today's currency. Quite a steal. But if you think about it, he probably should have waited a couple more years and it would have been his for nothing!

The bridge is massive, but you don't get much of a feel for it until the next photo.

There is teeny-tiny Jeff, standing at the bottom.

Light was fading fast, but I wanted to stay until seven o'clock to see the Drama of Creation, a light show with music and the biblical account of the creation that was inaugurated by Calvin Coolidge in 1927. After all, I said to Jeff, it's unlikely that we will ever get back this way again.

To pass the time, we walked along the Cedar Creek Trail to Lace Falls in the rapidly waning light.

The base of the creek is unusual, consisting of rippled and layered stone.

Lace Falls.

We were underwhelmed.

We arrived back at the seating area just before it got too dark to see, and still had half-an-hour to wait. The show was quite spectacular (have I been using that word a lot lately?) and I am glad we waited to see it. The half-hour show consists of narration, accompanied by a light show and some of my favourite classical music, ending with (I am pretty sure) the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing God Be With You Till We Meet Again. 

We still had four hours to drive to Annie's house that night, so we listened to country music on the radio and drove and drove and drove until we arrived at her house at 1:30 am.

Just in time to catch a few hours sleep and babysit two of the grandkids the next morning. 

Warning: The next post will consist of gazillions of cute grandchildren photos. 

Heading south

The Visitor Center was blessedly un-populated on Monday morning, so Jeff spent some time on the resource room computers looking up information on old Thomas, while I searched fruitlessly for a wi-fi signal.

I whispered a wee hint in Abe's ear.

Don't go to the theatre!

Then we did the driving tour of battle sites. We stopped by the Little Round Top area and sneaked a listen to some of the tour bus drivers and private guides for some extra tidbits on the history. This was where the second day of the battle took place and it was particularly devastating.  

This could have been a decisive battle for the south and the Civil War might have been won in a day. However, due to sick commanders, reorganizations, distrust, and general mishaps among the southern troops, the outcome was indecisive and the next day would only bring further heartache and destruction.

This is looking out from the northern position, over the fields where the southern troops were stationed.

Overlooking Devil's Den, a boulder-strewn ridge about 500 yards west of Little Round Top. It is the site of one of the few southern successes of the day, when it was taken and used by sharpshooters and still occupied by Confederates at the end of the day.

It's hard to imagine, now, the sights and sounds of battle that filled this landscape 150 years ago. Over 3,000 men died here on the second day of battle and over 1,200 were wounded. This description is found on the official website:

Hours of combat had left a thick, heavy cloud of smoke hanging over the field, pierced by the frowning red glare of the sun setting behind the Confederate line. Booming artillery and crackling rifle fire, coupled with shouted commands, groans from wounded soldiers and the scared whinnying of horses, created the horrible sounds of war. 

We went down to Devil's Den for a closer look.

As we walked over the rocks, I imagined Confederate sharpshooters hiding in the crevices.

The battle was long and complicated and I could never hope to tell it in anything close to a coherent manner. Whenever we visit battlefields, my heart and mind are overwhelmed with sorrow for the suffering of the soldiers and their families, and I get to the point of being unable to hear even one more tale of destruction.

And yet, after we left Gettysburg in the early afternoon, we headed over the mountains to find Antietam. I did manage to get us slightly lost (thinking that the Appalachian Trail was a highway) but we found it eventually.

The Battle of Antietam (also known as the Battle of Sharpsburg) took place on September 17th, 1862. It was the bloodiest single day of fighting in the war, with 22,717 missing, wounded or dead on both sides. 

These cornfields were once running in blood.

We walked along the Bloody Lane. This sunken road was used by outnumbered Confederates to hold off a series of Union attacks. When union troops eventually entered the lane, they fired straight down it, killing and wounding countless Confederates.

There is a watchtower at the end of the lane. It was built after the war, for the purpose of training military leaders in the art of battle.

We had one more stop to make before heading down to visit friends at Buena Vista (pronounced Byoona Vista, for those in the know) for the night. So on we went, to Luray Caverns, a casualty of lack of time on our visit to Virginia last year.
I will only subject you to a few photos from my arsenal.

The caverns were discovered in 1878 by a tinsmith and local photographer.
The tour lasts one hour and the caverns are mighty. Some of the ceilings are ten stories high. The next two photos give you an idea of the scale.

We love caves and I have lost count of how many we have visited. This was definitely the biggest and grandest but, somehow, the caves disappointed me. I prefer a certain amount of ruggedness and impoliteness in my caves. Here, all was paved and lighted and downright civilized. However, it was worth the visit and I would recommend you take the time too, if you are ever in that neck of the Shenandoah Valley.

This pool was filled with coins. We hear that people sometimes throw paper money in as well. Periodically, the money is collected and donated to charity. Almost a million dollars has been donated so far. Hard to wrap your mind around that figure, isn't it?

One of the things I dislike about caves is that I want to take a million photos because of all the awesomeness, but they rarely turn out to do the views justice. If I use a flash, it creates bright spots, and if I don't, the photos are blurry.
Like these reflecting pools, which were absolutely brilliant.

One of the young men had a strange-looking walking-stick thing, which was attached to his camera and steadied it while he took photos. I finally worked up the courage and asked him what it was.
Monopod.
I need one of these.
Children, take note. Your mother wants a monopod for Christmas.
It sounds like an alien intruder.

Some formations are translucent.

Everything is on a grand scale. No close-ups here.

 Right before you leave the caverns are the fried eggs.
I wanted to scrape these up and eat them, they are so adorable.

And a close-up of the adorableness.

We left Luray Caverns and drove south to Byoona Vista. 

But that's a story for another day.