Good Ol' Shenandoah

I'm not sure why I named this post "Ol' Shenandoah," other than the fact that Shenandoah sounds like a name that should have "Ol'" attached to it. I guess that's just the country in me coming out!

This stop was a serious change after two weeks in Connecticut. Rather than crowded, downtown Mystic, we were in the middle of Virginia horse country. We could see for miles, outside our back door.

And, as you can see, our home came with its own derelict old fashioned car (a Ford Country Squire, probably early 60s) in the yard!

The industrial-looking building next to us was the ornamental glass shop owned by our hosts. We never did make it over to do any memento shopping, but we did enjoy some of the beautiful glass art they used to decorate the house.

Of course, the main attraction in (or, more accurately, sort of near) Harrisonburg was Ol' Shenandoah National Park. I never would have believed this to be true of a busy mid-Atlantic park, but Shenandoah was actually closed! That's not to say that the gates were locked; rather, that there were no visitor services. So, we could go pretty much anywhere we liked to hike, but there were few open bathrooms, no visitor center, and no gift shop to buy stickers or get a passport stamp. 

Even in the dead of winter, the park was pretty, and we enjoyed some lovely hikes.

Nathan got to play with some epic frozen puddles.

And we even got to walk a tiny little chunk of the Appalachian Trail!

We mostly just enjoyed the quiet solitude of the winter woods and some pretty amazing views.

While we were in the area, we decided to take a day-trip to Charlottesville - home of the University of Virginia and my old stomping grounds during a short period in the early 2000s, when I attended the Army JAG school there. To be clear, there is ONE thing everyone must do when they visit Charlottesville: Monticello! Thomas Jefferson's home was a particularly relevant stop for us; we'd been passing time in the car listening to the audiobook version of Undaunted Courage, a history of the Corps of the Discovery. Here, we could see the grounds that Merriweather Lewis walked with Jefferson as the young President schooled Capt. Lewis in the finer points of botany, science, medicine, and sundry other skills that would come in handy as the Corps made its way to the Pacific Ocean (go Oregon!).

Turns out Mr. Jefferson dug his booze; he had a wine cellar AND a beer cellar!

Seems he was also a gamer!

This was a President who liked to have a good time!

We appreciated that the folks at Monticello took their Covid responsibilities seriously. They dramatically limited the number of visitors, and they were quite serious about masks. It was nice doing something touristy, with other people nearby, but still the ability to social distance and feel safe. 

This was also the weekend following the horrifying riots in DC, incited by Donald Trump. It seemed like a great time to visit a place that celebrated a true statesman and a real president. It helped restore a little of our faith in humanity.