5/28/15 Oh boy! Today was another travel day so we departed Small Country RV in Louisa, VA, and drove north and a bit west to the Skyline Ranch Resort in Front Royal, VA, which is at the north entrance to Shenandoah National Park. The Garmin selected a route that sent us down a variety of gorgeous, skinny, serpentine roads, some of which had pretty substantial uphill sections on them. One of the roads took us past Montpelier, where James Madison used to live but we zipped by at about 40 mph so we didn’t see much of anything there. The roads are quite scenic but very narrow in this part of the world and they offer few places to pull out for traffic which may be caught behind us. Virginia is not a state for novice or easily-frightened RV drivers, particularly those of us who elect to stay off the interstate highways which are lumpy.
The speed limits are fairly low on the roads we traveled today which is fortunate because it allowed us to enjoy the scenery. Unfortunately, the conditions noted above also resulted in some pretty substantial traffic queues behind us that I had no option to deal with other than ignoring the poor, miserable, slow-moving tailgaters that had only the Barbarian Invader’s bumper to look at. Fortunately, the low speed limits also allowed me to keep our 8 foot wide, 51 foot long, articulated, 10 ton vacation home from veering into the oncoming lanes and terrifying the innocent motorists fortunate enough to be traveling the other way. We did have a cop follow us for about 10 miles but I was able to keep the truck and fifth wheel trailer in one lane (mostly) and there was no danger of us exceeding the speed limit since I was unable to go fast enough and still keep from running off the road into some plantation.
Skyline Ranch is a nice park with full hookups and, since I got a membership to Resort Parks International with my Thousand Trails membership, the cost per night is only $10. The park has wi-fi for $3 a day, a pool, a stocked fishing pond, a hot tub (although I am too old and ugly to ever let anybody see me in one), horseback riding, a laundry, something called a “Soo Line Caboose” and advertise that they have something called “Holey Board,” which may or may not be something left from the Inquisition. We believe it is the same thing or game that they referred to as “Corn Hole” in Lynchburg. Whether it is Holey Board or Corn Hole, I’m not sure I would be too interested.

We popped over to Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s little pad, near Charlottesville, VA, today. The visit started with the normal visit to the facility visitor center which is pretty spectacular since it is very impressive heavy-timber framed structures. At this place they quickly separated us from $25 a head to ride a shuttle up to the house, a tour of the downstairs portion of the place and unlimited wandering about in the basement and the grounds.
Jefferson himself designed the structure and the guy must have been a genius although he was also OCD and wrote everything down. He has extensive records of where everything was acquired and for how much, where plants were placed in the gardens, how many slaves he had and how much they cost and copies of every letter he wrote. He had a device he created that would write a copy of whatever he wrote to facilitate his anal-retentive tendencies.
The house itself is quite impressive and from the exterior looks pretty close to the depiction you see on the back of contemporary nickels. There is a clock mechanism over the front door that showed the time to folks inside the house displaying hours, minutes and seconds and showed the time to folks outside (slaves) in hours only. It is powered by falling weights that look like cannonballs but there might have been a bit of a design flaw. The weights fall a certain distance per day but the room wall height is insufficient to allow for a week of timekeeping so Tom cut holes in the foyer floor to allow the weights to descend into the basement in order to avoid winding the clocks more than once per week. There are clocks all over the house, all of which required weekly winding. Most of them seem to be running today so they must be well-built. There are records from Tom and others living at the time indicating he wound all the clocks once a week, although he may not have done much else since he had 200+ slaves and was busy being anal about listing everything.
There is a bunch of original and some re-created furniture throughout the house that is very impressive but uncomfortable looking. They wouldn’t let me lay down on Tom’s bed because it is 225 years old but I can tell you that if you got up on one side of the bed you would be in his study and if you got up on the other side you would be in his bedroom. The bed would also be short for me because Mr. Jefferson designed the bed for someone 74.5 inches tall (it is 75 inches long) and I’m a bit too tall. He had the only room with a private bath. There are other bathrooms in the building with an interior plumbing system which exited a lot closer to where the slaves lived than to where Tom slept. Still, most of the old houses we have visited in Virginia have outhouses so Monticello, at least in a sewer plumbing sense, was way ahead of it’s time.
We also wandered around in the gardens which are very beautiful and exceptionally well-tended. Of course they have every plant identified, just like in Jefferson’s time. The trees are all quite mature and cast big shady spots which was delightful since it was 92 degrees and the humidity seemed to leave everyone soggy. From the gardens you can wander down to Jefferson’s grave which is marked with an obelisk that is not quite as big as the Washington Monument but shaped about the same.
Tom was quite a whiz. He wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Amendment which separated church from state and ultimately became the first amendment to the Constitution in addition to establishing the University of Virginia. He was also a bit strange since he made a substantial stink about all men be created equal while holding some 200 slaves on his estate.
In any event, Monticello is a great place to visit and I certainly believe I got my $25 worth of experience. The house is spectacular, the tour was informative and given by a very knowledgeable docent, the gardens are beautiful and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation does a great job maintaining the joint. The only suggestion I could make is that if you are traveling to this great site, don’t take the interstate.

Today we packed away all our stuff and bugged out from Lynchburg TT headed for a non-TT campground called Small Country near Louisa, VA. We started out from Lynchburg on County 615 which took us to VA-24 to VA-29 and ultimately to I-64 where we were again treated to the benefits of the Virginia Department of Transportation’s magnificent road maintenance program. I-64 has similar surface characteristics to I-95, namely, the road surface is liberally pockmarked by randomly located ravines, craters, faults, crevasses and gouges that have all been completely ignored by maintenance staff probably since the interstate system was created during the Eisenhower administration back in the ’50s.
However, almost without fail we have had top-notch roads when driving on Virginia state highways and a preponderance of the county roads or city streets we have traversed. It must be a Virginia thing.
The drive northeast on VA-29 is extraordinarily beautiful. We drove this same road going southwest on May 22 but for some reason (perhaps because we were going the other way) it seems like a whole new series of vistas. Virginia countryside is worth driving through just for the scenery. Just try to refrain from using the interstate highways which are also scenic but the road surfaces require your undivided attention if you want to avoid substantial alignment and tire wear issues.
The Small Country RV park is quite nice. We were assigned a pull-through site near the store that is great from a shopping standpoint but a bit too centrally located for our taste. There are an abundance of other sites that I am sure would have met our desires but I stupidly requested a pull-through spot when I made the reservation a few weeks ago so I only need to look in the mirror to see who was responsible. Small Country also has a pool, a lake, playgrounds for kids, wi-fi and CATV if you want to pay a bit more. The access from I-64 is a bit circuitous but there is gorgeous scenery all the way so that was okay with us. Lots of birds can be heard singing in the trees.

Here in Gladys, VA, it seems we have discovered a demented bird that has developed an unnatural attraction for the rear window of the Invader. A gorgeous, bright red cardinal perches on small twigs right behind out trailer, makes a variety of nifty bird noises and then flies at and smashes his face on our rear window. He started this behavior at about 6:30 this morning, increasing the frequency of his face-smashing until he was making about 10 or 15 face-plants per minute, seemingly with no ill effects.
In an effort to stop him from suicide by plate glass window, Peggy created a watercolor painting of what appeared to be the upper head of an owl with a lower section that was a grinning killer clown from space. This masterpiece was attached to the rear window right where the cardinal could easily spot it but it had an effect that, if anything, created even more frequent bird splats. The cardinal’s nice little tweeting noises took on a malicious tone during his efforts to eradicate the owl/clown from his anvil using his head as the sledgehammer.
Our next strategy was to take all the fresh, green twigs outside our window and securely wrap them around the Invader’s roof access ladder, seemingly eliminating the idiot cardinal’s perches from which he was launching his attacks. This technique was not particularly effective as the cardinal now merely limited his attacks on our glazing to one concentrated area.
Further efforts were plainly required to stop the cardinal’s poor behavior. Peggy then hung a large, patterned tablecloth over the interior of the window in an effort to eliminate reflections which seemed to drive the cardinal bonkers. However, the tablecloth technique only resulted in a brief lull in the now-invisible thumping of the bird’s head on our beloved home.
Next was a slightly more high-tech method to stop the self abuse by the pesky avian. I took out my 1,000,000 volt stun gun and fired it near the area of the cardinal’s misbehavior. Although it got the attention of some nearby human neighbors, it was totally ineffective at curtailing the bird’s self-destructive habits.
Our final technique was to leave all of our killer clown illustrations, twisted foliage, tablecloth and stun gun applications in place and listen to the dull thumps outside the trailer as the bird continues his fun with seemingly inexhaustible energy.
We started out this morning saying “poor little guy” and “Oh, I hope he doesn’t hurt himself” which, regrettably degenerated through the day to “the stupid bugger just won’t quit” and finally we acquiesced to resigned silence regularly interrupted by dull thumping noises, some of them with alarming frequency and determination as the persistent red bastard continued his head-banging on our trailer’s durable exterior.
As morning transitioned into early afternoon, we changed our preventative technique. Peggy placed some birdseed outside the trailer in an effort to get the stupid red bird to eat instead of performing face-plants. This method was also ineffective as the bird now took short breaks from his head-butting of our trailer to eat the seed, all the while making angry bird noises before resuming the masochistic head-smashing with newly fueled vigor.
We can now consider writing a sequel to Alfred Hitchcock’s classic except we will name it “The Bird.”

Today we drove east to Appomattox Courthouse where Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Grant with his vastly larger Army of the Potomac. There is some weirdness going on here that is hard to understand unless you actually go to the site. There is a courthouse in Appomattox Courthouse but it is not where the Civil War ended. Actually, all the festivities occurred at the McLean House not too far from the courthouse that sits in the center of the tiny township of Appomattox Courthouse. This whole area is a Federal Historical Park and it is revealing to see where the end of this horrible, bloody conflict ultimately came to an end. Seven days later, Abraham Lincoln was shot in Ford’s Theater in D.C.
We left the historical park after wandering around some through the remaining buildings and continued on to the town of Appomattox which was the site of some clashes as Grant tried to stop Lee and his army from going south after their retreat from Richmond but has little else to do with the war. There was one little skirmish here where the Confederacy lost some 7700 guys in a matter of hours.
In the town of Appomattox,we did find a restaurant, Granny Bee’s, that was recommended by the girl working the gate at our campground so we decided to give it a try. Peg had baked ham special and I had the chicken livers which came with very savory onion rings and really tasty baked apples. Everything we got on our plates was terrific and the total, including drinks, was less than $20. I wish we could find a restaurant like this in every town we visit.
After pigging out at Granny Bee’s, we continued south on County 47 through Pamplin, Madisonville and Cullen before turning west on County 40 and tiny-ass road 605 to Gladys where we took a chance on a back road and, surprisingly, ended up a block from our campground. We parked Charlotte and scurried into the trailer to enjoy the benefits of air conditioning. It is getting hot in this part of Virginia; maybe 86 or 88 degrees F.

Today Peg and I got to return to the Blue Ridge Parkway, which may be one of the best roads for sightseeing in the whole world. We started out the day buying diesel in Rustburg, VA, which we don’t seem to be able to call anything other than Rustbucket. It is actually a nice little town. We got on VA-24 which took us west to the outskirts of Roanoke where we turned northeast on the Parkway. The trip on VA-24 from Rustburg to Roanoke is a spectacular drive through hardwood forests, giant meadows with knee-deep grass and tidy farmhouses and barns before you get to the Parkway. Once on the Parkway, as has been the case every other time we have been on this road, the scenery was stunning and to make things better, the skies were very clear. From the higher elevations of the Parkway, you can gaze north out over the Great Valley which is a depression between the Blue Ridge and the Appalachians extending from New York to North Carolina. Looking south, you can look down over rolling hills that seem to extend all the way to Richmond. This part of Virginia is breathtakingly beautiful and I can heartily recommend at least some time on the Blue Ridge Parkway and in surrounding areas.
We left the Blue Ridge Parkway and turned southeast on County 130 to VA-29 south where we ran across a place called Jed’s Fried Chicken and, seeing as the owner shares my name, we purchased some fried chicken and baked beans, both of which turned out to be extremely tasty. We also took a spin through the town of Lynchburg where we observed a great variety of beautiful antebellum houses, big masonry churches and some very old rather large classic brick buildings in town. Lynchburg is laid out downtown in such a way that the numbered streets all run up & down very steep streets. Probably because they are so steep, some of the former streets have been converted to walks and stairs leading from the residential part of town at the top of the town down to the lower commercial part of town on the James River. Some parts of the town look abandoned but the buildings are still pretty neat.
From Lynchburg we went back to Rustbucket where we stocked up on groceries at the local Food Lion before heading back to the Barbarian Invader for drinks.

Early morning awakening resulted in our being able to leave the Prince William Forest Park area for another magnificent ride on the paving-challenged I-95 southbound by 9:30 AM, which is quite early for us elderly types. Fortunately, we only were required to appreciate I-95 southbound for about 20 miles or 45 minutes until we reached VA-3 for a bit of eastbound action. The rural roads seem to be paved by individuals with substantially more talent than those that have performed the substandard work on the interstate system and we were able to hustle across Virginia to our destination near Lynchburg, VA in a bit over 4 hours averaging almost 40 miles per hour the entire way.
This drive across the middle of VA is very scenic and we finally arrived in the Lynchburg TT park after traveling through Lynchburg, a rural town called Rustburg or Rustbucket and finally on to Gladys, VA, which is shown on some, but not all, maps in microscopic print which correlates to the size of the local population. The Lynchburg park is nice, with pretty big camping spots and plenty of shade. It is nice to be out of the city again and Peg and I celebrated by drinking some good beer shortly after arrival and set-up.
The part of the park where we are camped is pretty full, probably because it is Memorial Day weekend. I will report on how staying in the park turns out in my next transmission.

Not having had enough of D.C. yesterday, we repeated our commute, rail trip and endurance hiking to visit the Smithsonian Castle and the Air & Space Museum. During our trudge from the Metro station to the Smithsonian, we happened to pop into the close-by Freer and Sackler Galleries of the Smithsonian. Both galleries had some paintings of ugly people but also ancient pottery and gold items, sculptures, coins and other artifacts which were great to see. We ducked into these two galleries in hope of finding a dry way through to the Smithsonian Castle because it was raining. Although unsuccessful at finding a dry path, we did enjoy the terrific exhibits in these two galleries. The Sackler has a big exhibit about an American artist named Whistler who seemed somewhat creative but suffered from being an incurable deadbeat who shirked debt, screwed folks out of promised works and was generally an asshole according to his dearest former friend and shafted patron with the last name of Leyland.
We exited these galleries and took the very wet hike to the Smithsonian Castle which we found out was only a visitor center for folks who want to visit the dozen or so other museums all collected under the name. The visitor center had a gift shop with stuff like bobble-head Einsteins and expensive earrings, a restaurant we elected to forgo and lots of screaming children anxious to go curse the visitors to the museums. From this unmuseumlike place we emerged into a pretty substantial rainstorm, headed for the Air & Space Museum a few furlongs away. Fortunately for us, we were able to enjoy the benefits of Federal security precautions by being forced to stand for quite a while in the rain outside the museum while dutiful security personnel made sure none of the citizens entering the museum had any nasty things hidden in their backpacks, enormous purses or shopping bags full of D.C. memorabilia which had been carefully crafted by the best Chinese artisans. Needless to say, we were damp when we finally made it into the museum but the place is definitely worth it. There are exhibits which range from stuff about drag and lift, ancient Leonardo De Vinci flying machines which would absolutely not fly, the Wright Brothers, early bi- and tri-planes, early propeller airplanes, jets, rockets and spacecraft including a big section on the unmanned Viking program my Dad worked on at Jet Propulsion Labs. We were in here for hours and we still did not see it all. They also have a McDonald’s restaurant inside the building where you can get a very thin hamburger for about $10.
We finally left the Air & Space Museum and took a damp stroll to the light rail system for a ride to the other end of the Mall to see the White House. Of course the train delivered us to a station that was only about a half mile from the edge of the Ellipse in front of the White House. From there it is several long blocks to where you can get a glimpse of the Executive Mansion and that is about all. Security forces have the taxpayers fenced off from the White House such that if you get in just the right place, you can see a little segment of the front of the building. For us to get a picture here was difficult because the little postage stamp sized area where you could see Barack’s current digs was infested with impolite foreign visitors who would not step aside long enough for citizens to take a photo of their President’s pad. After some bullying by me, I was able to get some of the ferners dislodged from their camping spots long enough to snap a few shots of the White House and a selfie of Peg and me standing in front of the distant building. After giving the newly relocated foreign language speakers an All American leer, I grabbed Peg and we skulked off from the area in search of a Metro stop so we could board the light rail for the ride home. After about a mile or so, we arrived at McPherson Square where there was supposed to be a Metro Station. Unfortunately for us, only locals can find the Metro Station in this area because it is cleverly concealed inside the basement of a building which is near but not in McPherson Square.
We hustled down the escalator which was not functioning and entered the catacombs of the Metro. After a few minutes, we realized D.C. signage is designed by the same persons who create the mystifying Virginia signage because we were directed to the correct train but it was going in the wrong direction. After figuring out how to traverse the underground construction within the tombs of the Metro, we made it to the portion of the station where we needed to be to get back to the Franconia station. We were just in time because as soon as we got there, the Blue Line we needed to board was snafued by tunnel trolls and broke down due to undetermined voodoo. Some time later, a Blue Line train heading our way arrived but since there were delays in the system, all the folks upline who had also been waiting were already aboard the train but we were able to squish ourselves in for a long, stop-and-go stand-up ride back to Franconia. At arrival, we hobbled to the parking structure where the massive number of departing rail travelers promptly clogged up the exit lanes from the structure so everybody was treated to a protracted delay while idling and inhaling exhaust fumes. Several rail users found they had insufficient value on their not-so-smart transit cards to allow them to get through the exit gates and were flummoxed by having the gate refuse to allow them to exit and being equally screwed by being unable to back up and get out of the way due to the mass of idling cars behind them trapped by the volume of clever rail commuters. There is no provision for human interference since the system is unmanned to maintain cost-effectiveness. Machines to allow you to purchase sufficient value to get the gates to allow egress are cleverly located back in the rail station.
After a moderate delay, we were finally able to leave the parking structure for another 16 mile 40 minute commute back to the Invader. This experience has clearly shown me the benefits of metropolitan mass transit, particularly the form where meddlesome human interference is eliminated along with practicality and efficiency. Perhaps the intent of this system is to eliminate system delays through the murder of the fellow urban users.

5/20/15 Today we took another wonderful ride on I-95’s bombed out surface to the Franconia, VA, Metro light rail station for a ride into Washington D.C. After some fiddling around at the station, we were parted with $65 to cover the cost of parking and light rail rides into D.C. for 2 days. We hopped on something called the Blue Line for a ride to an underground station at the Pentagon where we changed to the Yellow Line for the continuation of the ride into the capitol. We disembarked at a stop called Archives and emerged from the subway catacombs directly north of the National Archives building. We heard a rumor that stuff like the Declaration of Independence are stored here but we didn’t go in so we really don’t know what’s inside. Archives, I presume.
After a stroll of about 1/3 of a mile, we entered the National Sculpture Garden which, unsurprisingly, has exterior sculptures strewn around a big round concrete fountain which doubles as a skating rink in winter. There is a sculpture of a large, life-size shiny stainless steel leafless tree which I thought was pretty spectacular but the rest of the stuff is pretty modern, a style which I do not have the talent to enjoy. The garden is still pretty neat even if morons like me lack the sophistication to appreciate it.
From there we wandered another quarter mile to the entrance to the National Museum of Natural History. Here is a museum that I can appreciate. The variety of natural history exhibits in the museum is quite extensive and I could easily have spent at least a full day or maybe two to see all the stuff if my feet didn’t hurt so much. Our experience in Washington taught us that there is a lot of mass transit, but no matter where the train drops you off, you will be required to take a long hike to get where you want to go and seating in the museums is very scarce. Also, at some museums there are long lines outside because everything in D.C. has overabundant security measures in place in order to inconvenience the tourists, give unemployables a job and make sure nobody brings a nail clipper into Federal buildings to commit terrorist acts, like farting in public.
From the Natural History Museum, we took another trek to the National Museum of Art – West where we scoped out a whole bunch of paintings, some of which I recognized but most of which I couldn’t. Numerous artists I have never heard of have scads of paintings stuck up on the walls and Peggy loved this place. We strolled through areas where French painters had pictures of ugly people, fruit and country scenes to areas where Dutch painters had pictures of ugly people, fruit and country scenes and on into areas where American painters had pictures of ugly people, fruit and country scenes. There were also some paintings of city scenes. A few interior sculptures are also showcased in the museum and I really liked one of a female and her gorgeous dog but there were quite a few of ugly people but no fruit or country scenes.
With my feet almost ablaze with agony, we then walked into the Mall where I took pictures of the Capitol Building which is covered with scaffolding such that it is almost entirely hidden from view. The middle section of the Mall is also very busy with excavation equipment which limits your view west to large Caterpillar and Mitsubishi excavation equipment busily obscuring the view. We could see the Washington Monument which is quite spectacular, even if the bottom part of it was hidden behind enormous piles of dirt. From our vantage point we could also see the National Air & Space Museum and the Smithsonian Castle which is a gorgeous structure.
Having endured about as much fun as we could stand in one day, we hobbled over to a Metro station where we boarded the light rail system for the ride back to Franconia, the parking lot and a one hour, 16 mile commute back to the Invader on the cleverly malformed I-95.

We departed Colonial Beach TT and drove up I-95 to Prince William Forest Park about 25 miles south of Washington, D.C. Again we were punished by the terrible Virginia interstate system roads due to their awful paving technology. Yawning gaps in the road surface at paving joints, potholes that are apparently repaired by being filled with mud and placed such that they are unavoidable and uneven surfaces between lanes are abundant and widespread.
However, once we left the interstate, the roads improved such that they are actually identifiable as roads although better roads are easily found in Mexico, Viet Nam and Mongolia. Prince William Forest Park is part of the National Forest system but, for some peculiar reason, our Federal access pass was useless here so we had to pay their rather expensive camping fees of about $45 a night. Proximity to D.C. must be the reason for the high fees because the RV camping area is nothing special although it does have pretty good wi-fi. TV reception sucks but all the utilities were good. The RV spaces are apparently measured by some mysterious Federal system because our 34′ trailer extends out both ends of a 40′ site. Maybe a Federal foot is only 9.5” long.
Our drive today only took a bit over an hour so when we got to the park and set up, we had most of the afternoon to explore the surrounding area. Manassas & Bull Run Civil War battlefields are close so we took a driving tour of the area which has pretty good interpretive displays and, weirdly, the burial spot of Stonewall Jackson’s arm. Although Jackson was a Confederate General, he was wounded in the left arm when shot by some nameless and careless Confederate sharpshooter. The Confederates hauled him to a local house, which is still standing, where his arm was amputated and subsequently buried in the back yard. The armless Jackson was then hauled over a long, circuitous road to another house about 25 miles away where he croaked a few days later from pneumonia, of all things.
The driving tour of the battlefield areas around Manassas is pretty interesting but some of the spots are hard to find due to the cleverly designed Virginia signage which only tells you where to turn after you have missed the opportunity to do so. The countryside is gorgeous here so even if you get lost the views are still very nice. Despite the beauty of the area it is a place where about 15,000 Americans were killed in two campaigns in the area and that weighs on you some.