Sunday, October 11, 2009 Cherry Hill Campground, College Park, Maryland

Today was a beautiful day, starting out in the upper 40’s, but warming up nicely to about 70, even though it felt warmer with the sunshine and only a very slight breeze. We left the trailer this morning and drove to Mount Vernon, the home of George Washington, located in Mt. Vernon, VA.

We toured the home where George and Martha had lived and died. He had been a fourth generation American; his great-grandfather had originally purchased the land and built the original house. It had passed down thru his family with him buying it from his older brother’s widow when he was only 22 years old. He added onto the house increasing its size by about 3 times what the original had been. It looks like a stone house, but it was made of wood, the boards were each about 2 feet long

and painted with a heavy white paint then sprayed with sand to look like stone.

They had beautiful flower gardens and as well as large vegetable gardens similar to what it was like when the Washington’s had lived there. They stressed how Washington’s favorite occupation had been as a farmer, even his very formal dining room had decorations featuring farming tools formed into the plaster ceiling and over the doors.

In the afternoon we went to the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Chantilly, VA. They had displays of all types of airplanes from some of the very earliest to the spaceships still in use. It was interesting, but I guess I need to let Larry tell about it. I was wearing down by then and just wanting to sit somewhere.

Highlights from the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center are the Lockheed SR-71, B-29 Superfortress (Enola Gay), the Space Shuttle, Concorde, and many more. The pretty well cover everything, Pre-1920 Aviation, Simulators, Military and Civilian aircraft and Space Satellites and Rockets (including Skylab). Except for some of the space hanger displays (a lot tend to only go up and not come back) the displays are the actual items. - Larry

Saturday, Oct. 10, 2009 Cherry Hill Campground, College Park, Maryland

We left the Shenandoah Valley around 8:30 headed for our next campground outside Washington DC. The highway took us up thru the valley between mountain ranges, so we traveled north, then east to College Park, MD. It was a lovely drive of rolling hills and the tree covered mountains in the background. As we neared Washington, the traffic increased dramatically. Larry did great, maneuvering this big truck and trailer thru 4 and 5 lanes of traffic that was moving at about 60 mph and pretty heavy, even at noon. Believe it or not, those little cars gave way when he started nosing over into their lane!

Our site at this campground is almost as far into the park as you can go, probably ¼ mile or more. Larry had asked for a quiet area, since we seem to usually get a spot that is right where everyone has to go by to get anywhere. There won’t be a lot of campers going by here - but - the campground backs up to a very busy highway. There is a LOT of road noise. After setting up the trailer we had a few hours to relax before our tour of Washington which we had scheduled at the campground office. Since I hadn’t had much sleep the night before, I laid down to relax for a little while. That road noise didn’t bother me at all, I fell right to sleep and had a good nap.

We took a tour with Grayline called “DC after Dark”. They picked us (about a dozen from the campground) up by the entrance to the RV park and then went to Union Station where they picked up additional people. We went to the Washington Mall and made stops at the Vietnam and Korean War Memorials, the Lincoln Memorial,

Jefferson Memorial,

and FDR Memorial. The driver added the Marine’s Monument of raising the flag at Iwo Jima as our first stop.

They were all very impressive with the darkness surrounding the memorials and the lights illuminating them. We saw the Capital, White House, museums, and other buildings from the coach. We do plan to go back to some of them in the daylight, but we enjoyed seeing all the lights of the city and the reflections on the pools separating them.

Friday, Oct. 9, 2009 - Verona, Va

We spent most of the day today traveling south from the beginning of the Blue Ridge Parkway (Skyline drive).

We traveled 65 miles (of the 105 mile long Skyline drive section) before we decided we had seen enough of up and down, winding and twisting roads. At one point we were a little over 3,000 feet in altitude.

It was beautiful, but you really only need so many pictures of tree covered hills. There was a little color in the trees, but it was mostly green.

I (Karen) went thru the Virginia Quilt Museum in Harrisonburg. It was nice, but kind of small. They had some modern artsy type quilts as well as several antique quilts, but no photography was allowed, so I don’t have any pictures to show.

We came back thru Staunton, VA which is just the next town from here, probably 5 miles away. They had signs advertising the Presidential Museum and Library for Woodrow Wilson which is located there. We thought we might find that interesting, after finally finding the place with the help of our GPS and following their signs, down narrow streets, many of which were one way streets, we found a parking place and went inside. A man sitting behind a little counter informed us it would be $12.00 each. We didn’t think we were interested enough for that, he then came down to $10.00 each since we were seniors, but we still weren’t interested enough to part with $20.00. We decided we could find out all we wanted to know about Wilson by looking him up on the internet. Neither of us has done that yet. . . .

We came back to the trailer, ate supper, and then took a walk around the campgrounds. It warmed up quite a bit today. This morning we had the heater on in here, this evening we turned the a/c on as it was nearly 80 degrees in here, plus many of our neighbors had fires going and we were getting smoke inside. We’re settled in for the night now. We have cable TV, so we’ll be able to watch our regular Friday night shows. Just like home!

Thursday, Oct. 8, 2009 - Verona, Va

Well, today started out with a little learning experience. I was dumping the tanks and when I pulled the gray tank handle, it and the tube extension pulled out of the underbelly. Figuring out how to fix it I got drenched, but got it fixed.

Long travel day today, 8 hours. At least that is the longest drive I have planned for this trip. Trip took us thru the Appalachian Mountains and we are now in the Shenandoah Valley. I don’t know a better way, but the West Virginia Turnpike was a wash board. It was not the whole day though, and the roads had been great up until then and again after we exited the Turnpike. By the time we got as far as West Virginia, there was finally a little color in the trees. The news on the TV said the color peak won’t be for another couple of weeks, so we’ll probably see the most color on the way home thru Pennsylvania and Ohio.

We are staying at the Shenandoah Valley Campground for two nights.

As usual, we are ‘roughing’ it with WIFI and Cable TV. It’s a nice campground and seems to have as many as a dozen tame rabbits that are in the park.

I’m sure they are there just to tantalize Penny. Tomorrow we will take a drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway and see some of the local sites.

Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2009 - Frankfort, KY

Larry called the Toyota plant this morning about a tour they give through their plant. They said they had a large group coming, but if we wanted to come in and be put on their stand-by list, they may have room for us. We decided to go on in and try to get in with the scheduled group. At 10:00 there were about a dozen of us waiting in stand-by, but no scheduled group had showed up. They went ahead and took our bunch and later we saw another tram apparently with the scheduled group. This is a huge Toyota plant with a total of about 7.5 million square feet under roof in the various buildings among the 1300 acres. They have about 7,000 employees plus 2000 temps and said they have never had any layoffs. They manufacture the Camry, Avalon, the Venza and the Camry Hybrid here at this plant with the goal of 2000 vehicles a day. They said the Camry has more American made parts than any other car. No pictures allowed.

We came back to the camper for lunch and to check on Penny, then went for a tour of the Buffalo Trace Distillery. This is a small still.

Their tours were given hourly, so we thought we had a pretty good change of getting in. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it was really much better than I expected. The tour guide really made it all very interesting. I guess about all the information I came away with is that all bourbon is whiskey, but not all whiskey is bourbon. The rest of the information went in one ear and out the other, but it was enjoyable, including the taste test. ;-) Larry have more information, but that’s all for me. –Karen

All I will add is that they said: If we stopped production today, they have enough aging in barrels to continue to bottle for another 20 years. - Larry

6 Oct 2009 – Frankfort, Ky

We had an uneventful 6 hour trip for the first day. We are now at the Elkhorn Campground in Frankfort Ky.

We left in rain this morning and had mostly cloudy skies during the trip. Light rain when we arrived, but not enough to bother us. We will be here two nights. Took a walk around the campground and saw this tobacco barn in the field next to the park.

Tomorrow we are planning a tour of the Toyota plant and Buffalo Trace Distillery. Other than looking around the horse farms in the area, which will probably be it for the day. So, maybe something more interesting tomorrow.

Oct 2009 - Ready to head east again.

We are going to head east again this fall. Our plan is to spend a week in Wash DC and than head to Phil and NYC. While in Washington, we will meet up with Lora and family for a few days. It just happened that as we had been planning our trip, Lora had been planning a trip over school break to Washington also, so we will be there at the same time. Funny how things work out, but we are excited to be able to spend time with them in DC. We are finishing up getting the RV ready and plan to leave on Tue, so hopefully Tue night will be the first post for this trip.