Day Nine-Monticello and Shenandoah Valley

Day Nine

We were very tired after our busy day yesterday, so slept in (until about 7:30). We had intended to spend another day in the DC area, but had pretty had it with the traffic. I’m sorry Bob didn’t get to see the Holocaust Museum, but we had been to Auschwitz when we traveled to Eastern Europe together some years ago.

There seemed to be an inordinate number of people for this time of year. We thought perhaps that people who had come to see Pope Benedict had stayed in DC for the weekend. Larry said that it’s just always that bad. It’s a little bit different from riding the Metro from a downtown hotel to the IRS office. Guess I got a little spoiled.

We took our time leaving Gainesville, Virginia and meandered through the countryside. One village called Culpeper (one p, not Culpepper) was celebrating Remembrance Day. We stopped at a yard where Loyalists and Patriots were re-enacting. Their costumes were authentic; some played the fifes and drums.

This site just happened to be the county museum; it had quite a selection of historic books about the county, including one on the church register. About a dozen Porters and that many more Taliaferros were listed in the index. In the museum, we found a crib that been crafted for a baby in the Taliaferro family.

We stumbled across a German bakery (reminded us of F’berg, Texas). We bought some spice cookies and three croissants that the ladies sliced for us, then Richard and Bob ferreted out some goodies to stuff in the buns for our lunch. (They found some pimento cheese for me; I had been whining for some time for a pimento cheese sandwich.)

We picnicked in a little garden/fountain area and on the way out of town; Richard saw a sign for historic ruins. The ruins happened to be in a vineyard, so we turned in and drove down the little country road. We saw a tiny cemetery, not a group to by-pass the opportunity to kick over a tombstone; we went for a stroll through it. I think there were about a dozen graves; lo and behold the two biggest grave sites were Mary and John Taliaferro! This is crazy.

We were actually on our way to Monticello, but stopped on several serendipity sidetracks that we got to Thomas Jefferson’s home too late to take the tour. We went through the museum, which was incredible. It had tons of TJ’s handwriting: his expense accounts, his pithy sayings, and his farm records. Very interesting.

Tonight we’re in Lexington, Virginia, home of Virginia Military Institute. We’re going to the Porter homestead tomorrow and to Natural Bridge. The Shenandoah Valley is a beautiful place. I drove over the Blue Ridge Mountains this afternoon while Richard and Bob took their naps. We’ll soon be looking for a place to have dinner. More tomorrow. J

Day Eight--Mount Vernon

Day Eight
Left Williamsburg heading for Washington DC. We stayed out in the western suburbs so that we’d be close to Larry Warner and Dulles Airport. We dropped off Bonnie at Dulles about ten o’clock this morning and went to Mount Vernon for the day.

George Washington wrote, “No estate in the United American is more pleasantly situated than this . . .”
I'd have to say he was right. It’s a beautiful estate; he acquired about 8000 acres and spent about 50 years improving the land. It helped that he was a slaveholder (279 people who lived at Mount Vernon, including the household, the slaves, free Blacks, the Scottish gardener and other servants.)

The grounds were stunning with an upper garden, lower garden, fruit garden and nursery, salt house, stables, paddocks, slave cabin, servants’ hall (where the visitors’ servants were housed), smokehouse, wash house, coach house, spinning house and on and on. We were just mesmerized by the attention to detail and how beautiful everything was. Some of the trees looked to be original; three people couldn’t reach around them.

Poor George died a hard death; he had a throat infection that made his air passages swell shut and he suffocated. He was 67-years old.

After we left Mount Vernon, we started our three-hour trek back to the hotel. It should have been a 45-minute drive. Needless to say, we were all whipped, tired and dusty from walking all over MV and waiting in line in the hot sun and just want to lie down for a nap. Unfortunately we had about ten minutes to wash up and get over to Larry’s.

It was well worth the hurry. Larry and his wife, Desi, his Brazilian wife live in an architectural wonder themselves. Larry collects cartoon cells, posters, storyboards and has MANY originals in his home. I think he had cells from every Disney movie ever made and many cartoons. I saw Peter Pan, Cinderella, The Tigger Movie, Leghorn Foghorn, Mickey Mouse, Minnie, Lion King, Pirates of the Caribbean, ET, Star Wars, Star Trek and more that I won’t name here. Then, he took us to see his wine cellar; he had around 2,200 bottles of wine. (Picture below) It’s too bad we are all pretty much ambivalent toward wine and can’t tell the difference from a $10 bottle and $100 bottle. We would have been much more impressed. For dinner, we went to a Russian restaurant. The beef stroganoff was outstanding. Larry ordered the wine; it was pretty fantastic, too.