T&C Southwest Adventure 2021

This likely will be the last blog of this incredible cross-country adventure. We spent Wednesday morning in Jamestown, Virginia, and Thursday afternoon and evening in Gloucester, Virginia. We traveled north on Thursday with brief stops in Washington, D.C. and at the Great Falls National Park in McLean, Virginia. We ended the day in Reisterstown, Maryland, at the home of our daughter, son-in-law, and two grandsons. We’ll be here through the weekend before moving on to New Jersey for a few days to visit my brother and his family. Then it’s back to Maine. We’ve traveled 9,920 miles and will clearly surpass 10,000 before returning home.

As much as we enjoyed Williamsburg on Tuesday, Jamestown was equally enjoyable with its history, reenactors, and beautiful fall weather.

We watched an informative movie about its history, toured the museum, walked through the replicas of the Powhatan Indian village, the English fort, and onto replicas of the three ships that brought 105 colonists to Virginia, making Jamestown the first permanent English settlement in North America in 1607.

From the replica of the settlement, we drove down to the site of the actual settlement on the James River.

Before leaving Jamestown, we had lunch at the Visitor’s Center of peanut soup in a sourdough bread bowl, a Virginia specialty.

Leaving Jamestown, we headed to Gloucester to visit my 91-year-old second cousin, Agnes.

While visiting Agnes, we stopped at the historic home where she grew up, the Abington Glebe House built in 1677. When Agnes and her three sisters lived there with her parents, my great aunt and uncle, we used to visit during Easter vacations in the 1950s. My great aunt used to tell us the home used to be an inn in which George Washington’s father once slept. We have not been able to verify it. It now is owned by the St. James Anglican Church.

On Thursday we continued north to Washington, hoping to tour the U.S. Capitol Building. As many times as we’ve been to Washington and toured the monuments and museums, we’ve never gone into the Capitol. Wd didn’t this time either — it’s closed indefinitely because of COVID, as are many other D.C buildings. We spent some time walking around Capitol Hill — the Capitol and U.S. Supreme Court — but that was the the extent of this D.C. visit.

Our final stop, 30 minutes northwest of D.C., was the Great Falls National Park, our 11th national park of this trip, but completely unknown to us until our daughter told us about it a few weeks ago.

The park is at a point where the Potomac River funnels into a narrow gorge and cascades over jagged and steep rocks.

Signing off for now. Thank you for following us and the comments many of you have made. We’ll be back in Maine next week.

Our travels turned us north today from Durham, North Carolina into Virginia and ending in Williamsburg. We spent the afternoon walking around the colonial town and briefly onto the William and Mary campus.

A number of the colonial buildings were closed, likely because of COVID. It would have been more disappointing if we had purchased the $50 tickets to enter the buildings, but we opted to just walk the streets, see some of the reenactors, and enjoy a beautiful fall afternoon.

The most interesting reenactor was in character as Patrick Henry, the first governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia. He sat on the porch of the Raleigh Tavern and to a small crowd of tourists, he talked about Williamsburg being the true seat of American liberty — “Not Philadelphia, not New York, not Boston.” He also discussed as a Christian, he was conflicted by owning slaves, but always did. He said when he lived in the Governor’s Palace, there was no better meal than the veal stew at the King’s Arms Tavern. It was a fascinating discourse on a wide range of subjects.

We also came across General George Washington riding his horse and occasionally stopping to talk with people about life in Williamsburg in 1776-77, and allowing children to pet the nose of his horse.

Some other images from our afternoon:

And, of course, we enjoyed seeing Virginia’s state bird — ones we don’t see as often in Maine any more.

Tomorrow we plan to visit Jamestown and Yorktown in the morning before spending the rest of the day with Agnes, my second cousin who is 93 and a wonderful southern lady.

The first half of today was driving across North Carolina from Ashville to Winston-Salem to Greensboro and then Durham, all on I-40. We considered going into the Biltmore Estate in Ashville, but it was $96 each to tour the home and gardens and $76 just for the gardens. We opted to move on to Durham and Duke University.

It was a great decision!

We spent 3 1/2 hours walking around the amazing campus (12,800 steps, 6 miles), much of it spent in the Duke Gardens. We can’t even begin to imagine what these gardens must be in the spring because here at the end of October there were surprises on every path.

We had a special interest in being here. The gardens were created by Doris Duke, the billionaire tobacco heiress, philanthropist and horticulturalist and daughter of James Buchanan Duke, whose $40 million endowment ($604 million in 2020 dollars) was given to Trinity College. It in turn was named Duke University.

We don’t know all of the connections, but in her youth, my mother would visit her Aunt Mary in Durham and she used to tell us about how much she loved being on the Duke campus. Doris Duke also had an estate in Honolulu, Hawaii, and she used to invite American teachers in Honolulu (a territory at the time) to come over and swim in her pool, one of whom was my mother. My mother never mentioned this to us, but after she passed away, we found letters that described in great detail the times she enjoyed going to Doris Duke’s pool.

The Duke Gardens are divided in four sections, each with a specific theme — Historic Gardens, Native Plants, the Asiatic Arboretum and the Doris Duke Gardens. The image above of the red Meyer Bridge is in the Asiatic section. Here are some images from all of the sections:

While we were walking through the gardens, gardeners were setting up displays of many types of chrysanthemums for a special exhib that begins Wednesday. The image above is one of them and here are some more:

We also spent time walking to and into the Duke Chapel — a centerpiece of the campus and both inspirational and spiritual.

On the steps of the chapel, they were holding a ceremony for dogs who had graduated from Puppy Kindergarten.

One of my big interests in touring the campus was to see the Cameron Basketball Stadium. We walked across campus to get there, but unfortunately, all doors were locked. I had to settle for purchasing a Duke Basketball T-shirt in the Student Store.

It was a very fulfilling way to spent a fall afternoon — even if we didn’t get to see Coach K and his Court!

Tomorrow it’s on to Williamsburg, Virginia, for two days, part of the time visiting my 93-year-old second cousin, Agnes.

As our trip winds down, our blog updates will also come near a conclusion. Today was fairly quiet, compared to what we’ve experienced the past seven weeks. We left our campground outside Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and drove back up through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and stopped at Newfound Gap. It was early enough that some parking spaces were available — unlike yesterday — and we got to see another amazing view of clouds below the peaks.

Also at Newfound Gap, we walked up the Appalachian Trail for about a half mile, bringing to an end my AT adventures.

From the Gap, we drove on to Cherokee, North Carolina, and spent a good part of the day driving across the Blue Ridge Parkway toward Asheville, North Carolina. The top image from this blog is along the Blue Ridge.

Our only stop was at the Graveyard Fields Overlook and hike to the High Falls. It is so named because many years ago the stumps and trees across the area resembled gravestones in a graveyard. A massive fire in 1925 changed the landscape which now features wildflowers and blueberries (in season). It was a 2.3-mile hike back to the High Falls which unfortunately it was very muddy, but rewarding once we reached our destination.

Along the way, we met Santa Claus, who showed us his credentials from the North Pole and gave Carol a $1 million bill because he liked her smile. He said I looked grumpy and didn’t give me anything. Look for some coal in my stocking in a few months.

We also met two dogs dressed up for Halloween.

Carol also spent part of the day working via texts and cell calls with our daughter back in Maryland. We needed her to set up an appointment for when we arrive on Thursday to have our windshield fixed. A few days ago a stone gave the windshield a small chip, but when we turned on the defroster this morning, the crack expanded to about 3 feet. We will be arriving at Melissa’s two days early to have it fixed.

Tomorrow we’re driving across Carolina to Durham, but I doubt we’ll be able to have lunch with Coach K at Duke.

It was a frustrating day for us in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We were out and into the park just after 9 this morning and drove directly to Clingmans Dome near the center of the park road between Gatlinburg, Tennessee and Cherokee, North Carolina. The parking lot was already overflowing with cars backing up onto the entry road. We were fortunate to find someone pulling out of a space just as we took a lap around the parking lot.

But that’s as far as the good fortunes would go.

By the time we left Clingmans, cars were backed up for miles just to get to the parking lot — finding an open space would take hours.

Throughout the day it would only get worse. The parking lots for all of the main sites and for most of the overlooks were filled to capacity and cars lined the main road on both sides, many teetering, half on the road and half slanted into ditches. It was gridlock as bad you would see in a big city.

When we visited the Rocky Mountain National Park earlier in this trip, we had to obtain permits for specific entry times to help control the traffic. At Arches NP, the entry gates were closed when a specific number of cars entered each day. At Zion, no cars were permitted to enter the park — shuttles took visitors to all of the sites. Shuttles also were extensively used in the Grand Canyon NP.

All of our previously visited national parks on this trip — 10 in all — also charged a $35 entry free for each car. The Smokies NP is free with no entry fee and it has always been the most visited of our country’s national parks. Last year there were 12.1 million visitors in the Smokies. Yellowstone was the second most visited park with 3.8 million and Zion was third with 3.6 million.

The reason for no fee in the Smokies and a formula for the chaotic traffic: In 1930 the states of Tennessee and North Carolina funded the building of the Newfound Road that runs through the center of the park. When Tennessee transferred ownership of the road to the federal government, if stipulated “no toll or license fee shall ever be imposed to travel the road.” And so the traffic flows — bolstering in a major way the economies of neighboring Gatlinburg, Pidgeon Forge and Cherokee.

Enough with the soap box.

When we arrived at Clingmans Dome — the highest point in the Smokies at 6,643 feet — there was an amazing view of puffy clouds in the valleys below us, covering many of the surrounding lower mountains.

The rest of the day was spent battling traffic and pulling off to any overlook or trailhead where we could squeeze in the Roadtrek. It didn’t happen often.

Here are some images of those limited stops along the park road and also from Clingmans Dome:

Tomorrow we’re moving on to Ashville, North Carolina — a relatively short drive up the Blue Ridge Parkway. On the way, we’ll drive up through the Smokies once again, hoping for a parking space or two.

It was a day of great diversity. We started out by driving north from our campground north of Atlanta, into the mountains of Northern Georgia, into larger mountains in North Carolina, and then into the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee. Beautiful overlooks throughout the Smokies, but when we drove out of the park into Gatlinburg, it was total chaos. Bumper-to-bumper traffic for more than an hour with overflowing sidewalks passing by every imaginable gift shop, restaurant, museum with Halloween themes, ice cream shops, Jeep rentals . . . It was crazy. We had less congestion getting into and out of Atlanta! Fortunately, our campground is six miles out of town and in a quiet, wooded setting by a stream.

Unfortunately, we will have to go back through Gatlinburg tomorrow to spend the day in the national park. Being a Saturday, it might be even worse.

Today also was a trip down memory lane. Driving up and over Newfound Gap in the Smokies, we stopped at the point where the Appalachian Trail crosses the road. This is where I came off the trail in March, 2013, with frostbite and was fortunate enough to get a ride into Gatlinburg (15 miles) to a hospital. The road had been closed because of snow, but my guardian angel was a scientist from Ohio State doing research on the winter habitats of salamanders (no joke) and he drove up through the road blocks.

Tomorrow we might pick up the trail where I came off and go a short distance, just so I can end my hiking experiences in the Smokies on the trail and not on an ice and snow-covered road.

While driving up through the park, we stopped at the Mingus Grist Mill. The mill was constructed in 1866 and local farmers would bring their corn harvest for milling.

A couple more images from the park:

Planning on some hikes tomorrow and hopefully some black bear sightings while they fatten up for hibernation.

Our campground has a cable connection so we’ll be watching the Red Sox-Astros in Game 6 and looking forward to seeing Game 7.

We spent a marvelous day at the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta, an incredible complex that is the third largest aquarium in the world behind newer ones in Singapore and China. Its variety of tanks and displays hold 11 million gallons of saltwater including the 6.3 million main tank which features two 26-foot whale sharks.

The Georgia Aquarium opened in 2005 after a $250 million donation from Bernard Marcus, co-founder of Home Depot.

On the way to the aquarium we walked through Centennial Park, site of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.

We spent five hours exploring many themes throughout the aquarium and saw the bottlenose dolphin and California sea lion shows (photography not permitted).

Rather than trying to describe all that we saw, I’ll offer a collection of our favorites images. For lunch we had chicken and waffles — it seems to be a must in the south, so we went along with our growing tests of regional cuisine. Good but not overly impressed.

Here we go:

Tomorrow we continue north, stopping for a couple of days in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, our 10th and final national park on this trip.

A short blog to catch up from the past few days.

We spent three days in Valrico, Florida, at the home of Carol’s sister and her husband, Janet and Buddy, and their new dog, Ruby. It was a time of relaxing, and enjoying time together while watching football and baseball.

It took a while for Ruby to warm up to us, but it wasn’t long before she was all smiles.

We left Valrico on Tuesday morning and drove north into Georgia and then west toward our campground near Columbus and Fort Benning, a total of 485 miles. For the trip. we surpassed 8,000 miles. From the campground after dark, we heard training exercises from the base, mainly gunfire and low-flying helicopters.

On Wednesday we headed back to I-75, passing acres of pecan trees, peach orchards and extensive solar farms. Our campground is a very nice KOA about 60 miles south of Atlanta. We spent a relaxing afternoon playing cards on the picnic table near the pond behind our site. Everything was the best it could be — until we saw the Red Sox game!

Our site is nestled in the iconic tall pines of Georgia.

It’s on to Atlanta early tomorrow morning. We have 9:30 a.m. entry tickets to the Georgia Aquarium and we anticipate heavy morning traffic and uncertain parking. As bad as it might be though, it won’t be worse than getting through Houston earlier in the week — we hope!

On Thursday we left the Buccaneer State Park in Mississippi and drove east on I-10 into Alabama and then into Florida. In Alabama we saw the USS Alabama battleship and when we entered Florida, a Blue Angels jet welcomed us at the Visitor’s Center.

Before we left Mississippi, Carol took a walk along the Gulf of Mexico.

After arriving at my cousin Kathy and her husband Charlie’s house in Navarre, they drove us out to the National Seashore for a picnic dinner at Opal Beach and to watch some seabirds amd a beautiful sunset.

Today we traveled around the Pensacola area, beginning with the National Aviation Museum at the Pensacola Naval Air Station.

From the air station, we had lunch at the Shrimp Basket in Pensacola and then drove to Joe Patti’s, the “world famous” seafood market in which you can expect to wait at least 45 minutes to an hour to place your order for all types of out-of-the-gulf fresh shrimp, oysters, and shrimp. Charlie ordered regular gulf shrimp, royal red shrimp and fresh tuna to take home for dinner. Amazing and so fresh!

Before heading back to Navarre, we stopped at the National Seashore above Pensacola Beach for one more walk along the Gulf.

Tomorrow is a full day of driving down the west coast of Florida to the home of Carol’s sister Janet and her husband Buddy. Likely won’t be a blog for a day or two.

We traveled 429 miles from Kady, Texas (western suburb of Houston) to Louisiana and then on into Mississippi on Tuesday and checked into the Buccaneer State Park Campground on the Gulf of Mexico. We originally had reservations at the KOA in New Orleans, but they canceled our reservation because the campground is still being used by clean-up crews working throughout the city in the aftermath of August’s Category 4 Hurricane Ida.

After checking into the campground, we immediately got back on the road and drove back west to New Orleans. It took 90 minutes, but only because we took the scenic route. We saw a lot of debris on the sides of roads, small boats washed up along the sides of roads and many structures with blue tarps on their roofs, but not much serious damage (even though it had been extensive). The French Quarter and much of the downtown area were in good shape.

We ate dinner at Mother’s, the iconic New Orleans restaurant that has been in operation since 1938. There’s nothing fancy about it, but the food was great. Its walls are lined with pictures of celebrities who have eaten there. Carol had a Shrimp Po’ Boy sandwich and I had the special Debris (roast beef)-Ham sandwich, au ju.

After dinner we walked down Bourbon Street — a lot of loud music, but very small crowds. Not much happening on a week night in October.

By the time we got back to the campground, we were too tired to post a blog!

We traveled back into New Orleans on Wednesday (took only an hour this time) and quicky found Cafe Du Monde, where we both had three of its famous beignets — hot and covered in powdered sugar.

On the sidewalk next to the cafe, a group of five men were holding a non-stop jazz jam with both music and singing. No questioning that this was New Orleans. A women across the street, dressed in full Mardi Gras garb was grooving to every note.

From the cafe, it was a short walk to the Cathedral-Basicila of St. Louis King of France (St. Louis Cathedral). It’s the longest continuously operating cathedral in the United States, originally constructed in 1718 and rebuilt in 1789 and dedicated to King Louis IX.

The statue outside the cathedral is of Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the United States and hero of the Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812. Jackson served in both the Revolutionary and 1812 wars.

After the cathedral, we wanted to walk up to the Garden District part of the city to see the large mansions. Our map showed it was about a mile away, but after a little while, we both were exausted. It was in the low 90s with high humidity. That’s when we discovered the St. Charles trolley could take us there for the senior rate of 40 cents.

We spent some time walking the side streets looking at the mansions and the amazing architecture.

We took the trolley back to the center of town and walked down Canal Street.

We eventually went back to Bourbon Street and had an early dinner at Bourbon Street Seafood. It was one of the few nicer restaurants that opened before 4 p.m. Carol had striped bass with red potatoes (a little spicy with the creole rub) and I had fried jumbo gulf shrimp with hand-cut fries (not spicy).

Before heading back to the campground, we sat by the Mississippi River and watched a paddle boat and blue heron.

When we were leaving Texas, we san in almost standstill traffic for an hour because an 18-wheel tractor-trailer jackknifed, closing all seven lanes of I-10, the main east-west route across Texas. It also required a haz-mat team for the clean-up. Bad way to start our long trip to Mississippi. Along the way, we we went over 7,000 miles since leaving Maine.

One final note on our campground — the land on which the campground now is located was first recorded in history in the late 1700s when Jean Lafitte and his followers were active in smuggling and pirating along the coast.

Tomorrow we’re heading to the panhandle of Flordia to visit with my cousin and her husband, Kathy and Charlie, who just returned from their summer cabin in Norway, Maine.