Our Lodgings

The first thing that greeted us in Asheville was:

Not bad for the lobby of a lil' ol' country inn, uh, make that Country Inn.  We stayed at a Country Inn and Suites the first time years ago, and I've liked them ever since.  They're kinda halfway in between a motel and a hotel (but more on the hotel side.)  We carry our own things in (with a luggage cart), but access to all the rooms is from the inside, there is an elevator, the ambiance is great (as you can see), with fresh fruit and homemade chocolate chip cookies on the sofa table for the taking anytime along with hot tea, coffee, or hot chocolate.  The free full breakfast including biscuits, sausage gravy, sausage, eggs, waffles, milk, orange juice, etc. sells John on Country Inns every time.  If you shop online for the room you can get one for almost (but not quite) the same price as what we call a "cheapy."

The rooms are equipped with high-speed Internet, refrigerator, microwave, 32" TV, and queen size beds - very important when John is 6'3" and *** pounds.  (I'm only 5'2", but let's just say John has started calling me Tubby Cat.  He gets away with that because cats are nice to curl up with...)  At home we have a king size bed, on Kauai we had a king size bed, but in Danville we've been making do with a double bed.  After five months and now with another three months to go, that double bed seems to get smaller every morning, so we REALLY appreciate the queen beds here!

We could have gotten a Jacuzzi suite; that would have been fun.  Asheville is normally a ski area, but they've only had a light dusting of snow so far this year.  (The Texas drought must have come a callin'.)  A waitress said yesterday that, for the last two years, by this time there was so much snow on the ground businesses had to close.  In fact, considering this is a resort/ski area, the price we paid for the room at this time of year was probably pretty darn cheap!


When I was eight or nine years old, our family moved from Texas to Nashville, Tennessee.  Our house wasn't available to move into yet, so Daddy put us up in the Biltmore Hotel.  All I can remember is that it had an inside, heated swimming pool, but I do remember Daddy being pleased as punch.  Soon, as an adult, I guess I might discover what all of the hub-bub over "Biltmore" was about.

Asheville, North Carolina

When the kids were young, before the Internet (in fact, before personal computers!) I would travel, by car, with a full set of encyclopedias.  I would have them look up different things as we traveled - just like I occasionally Google things for the blog.  For me, it's not enough to say, "That's a pretty town," or "That's a pretty building."  I want to know the STORY behind things.  Usually, when I research, there is a piece of information that is memorable or remarkable, and that's what I include in the blog posting.

Well, not so with Asheville, North Carolina!  There's so much interesting info I don't know where to start! 

Geographically, it is nestled between the Appalachian and Blue Ridge mountain ranges.  That's cool enough in itself.  We're in the way-far western part of North Carolina - within spittin' distance of Tennessee.  Gatlinburg (Tennessee) is only 70 more miles west.  There are trees - forest of them - everywhere (which is probably why there is so much furniture built in North Carolina.)  We were surprised at how many hardwood trees there are vs. soft pine.  (All the better to build furniture with!)  Pine would have been prettier year round, but you can't beat hardwood for fall foliage - or furniture.  Unfortunately, it's winter, so there is NO foliage, but not winter enough for snow.  We didn't come for the scenery though - this time.  We came to see the Biltmore Estate.

But back to Asheville itself.  According to Wikipedia:

Asheville pops up on national rankings for a variety of things:
Modern Maturity named it one of "The 50 Most Alive Places To Be,"  
AmericanStyle magazine called it one of "America's Top 25 Arts Destinations,"  
Self magazine labeled it the "Happiest City for Women," 
it is one of AARP Magazine's "Best Places to Reinvent Your Life",  
and was proclaimed the "New Freak Capital of the U.S." by Rolling Stone. 
Asheville has also been called "a New Age Mecca" by CBS News' Eye On America,  
In August 2006 Asheville was named one the "Best Outside Towns" by Outside Magazine. 
In the 2008 book, The Geography of Bliss, by Eric Weiner, Asheville was cited by the author as one of the happiest places in the United States. 

In 2011 Asheville was picked as one of the “10 Most Beautiful Places in America” by Good Morning America. 

In 2007, Asheville was named one of the top seven places to live in the U.S. by Frommer's Cities Ranked and Rated, 

and #23 of 200 metro areas for business and careers by Forbes. 
It was also named one of the world's top 12 must-see destinations for 2007 by Frommer's travel guides.

WOW.  What else is there to say?


Well, in the beginning, probably even the beginning of the beginning, the land around here belonged to the Cherokee nation.  (We all know how that turned out: The Trail of Tears.)  But the misery Europeans brought started way before the Trail of Tears.  De Soto came in 1540 and brought all kinds of European diseases the Cherokee had no resistance to, and the Cherokee died by the droves.  Even so, for the next 300 years this area was simply free hunting ground for game.


Asheville the town actually began as Morristown in 1793, and located where two Indian trails crossed.  (That's less than 20 years after the American Revolution.)  Morristown incorporated and changed it's name to Asheville in 1797.

Ten years earlier a soldier came and built a log cabin in the area.  Cherokee hunters kidnapped and killed him.  Bad idea.  He had a twin brother and brother-in-law.  We all know how that works.  After they got his body back the whole family came and settled here in the Swannanoa Valley at Bee Tree Creek.  And thus began the European (now American) occupation of the Cherokee Nation.


There were a couple of itty-bitty Civil War battles fought here - just because it was here.  There were no railroads to or from here, and it was of no real strategic value, literally nothing worth dying for.

The first railroad TO reach here was in 1880, and it became part of the Richmond and Danville Railroads.  (Hey!  I know where Danville is!)  The railroads brought steady growth to Asheville, but the last passenger train ran in 1968.  (Anybody here ever road a passenger train?  I did a couple of times back in the late 1950's and early 1960's.  Quite an experience.)


Asheville had the first electric street railway lines in the state of North Carolina, the first of which opened in 1889.  They were replaced by buses in 1934.

With the collapse of the stock market in the late 1920's, eight of the nine banks in Asheville failed.  The town itself had issued so many bonds to pay for the construction of city infrastructure that it was $56 MILLION in debt in 1929.  Instead of defaulting on those bonds, Asheville took it's time and paid off every penny of that debt.  Took them FIFTY years, but they did it.  Now, THAT's my kinda town.  Woo-hoo!  Good for y'all!  That's so cool it makes me want to move here!

So, that's pretty much Asheville.  You'll have to come back tomorrow to learn the story about the Biltmore Estate.  (I love to "talk story," as they say in Hawaii.)

Surprise!

I got up this morning, took John to work, came home, ate breakfast, and got a text from him saying the hospital was sending him home because there were so few echos to do.  Woo-hoo!  a paid day off ! Yea!!

So I hop in the car, go get him, and a few minutes down the road he says, "I'm not supposed to go in tomorrow either."  WHAT!  TWO days off!  Awesome!  And then it's the weekend, so that's a total of FOUR days off!

What to do, what to do?!  Well, we had talked about going down to North Carolina (how does one go down when one is going North?) to the Biltmore Estate in Asheville.  Guess maybe we'll just move the plans up a couple of days and treat ourselves to an overnight stay!  Happy New Year!!

Counting Down? or Counting Up?

About four weeks ago I posted our "Count Down" to leaving Danville.  Since then we have tried to eat up as many groceries as we could, and I have resisted buying more than the minimum we need - which has been pretty tough seeing as it was CHRISTMAS!  When considering Christmas gifts for each other we realized just two weeks after Christmas we'd be moving somewhere else.  I've been mentally packing all of our belongings.

Well, a few days ago, the supervisor asked for John to please extend his contract here in Danville.  (Stress the word "please.")  The decision of where John wants to work is ALWAYS entirely his - I'm not the one who has to get up every morning and go spend eight hours with (good or bad) co-workers or supervisors.  He may just be tired of sight-seeing in the current location, maybe it's too hot or too cold or too rainy, maybe he doesn't like our accommodations, maybe ...  well, could be any number of reasons he wants to not re-up.

He came home, let me know how very much they want him to stay, and told me that he would let them know the next day.  He shared his pros and cons with me, slept on it, got up the next day and said he would be re-uping (is that a word?)  Yesterday we were sent a new contract basically extending us until April 8th, with time off to go to a cardiovascular symposium written into the contract.

Time for me to mentally shift gears again and (literally) beef up the refrigerator, laundry detergent, bath soap (clean is always good!) and NEW LOCATIONS TO PLAY TOURIST!  YEA!! 

Gift Returns

Nothing in life is simple...

Well, almost nothing.  Working with Amazon.com on returns is simple enough, and they refund the money before they even have the product back.  Can't beat that.  But getting the package on the road ain't so very simple.

I printed out the UPS locations which included hours of operation - which I didn't look at.  Bright and early Monday morning I'm following Lil' Miss GPS and find the main UPS location in Danville easily enough.  But it was closed Monday for the holiday.  No problem.  I'll go to one of those private shipping locations that accepts UPS shipments.  Re-program Lil' Miss, and I'm on my way. 

Oops.  I see the location before Lil' Miss and almost miss turning in.  (I never panic about that; I just go around the block.  That works everywhere I've been except California - specifically San Francisco and L.A. - because they don't believe in "blocks" being shape like squares or rectangles...  One could wander off and fall into the Pacific Ocean before finding ones way back to a destination!)

I turn in, find a parking space, park, radio off, (I always do that, so that whenever I re-start the engine I can hear if it is hummin' or knockin'), ignition off, seat back, seat belt off, sunglasses off, get purse, keys in purse, wrestle package around the steering wheel and out the door.  Whew!

Confidently walk to the door of the store - and it's locked.  Aargh!  Back to the car, get the print out, find the phone number, call the store.  I'm welcomed by that oh, so annoying, tone and recording stating, "The number you dialed is no longer a working number..." (In the first place, I haven't "dialed" a number in a long, long time, and in the second place I'm sitting in front of the store, and there is every evidence it is a functioning shipping location accepting UPS and Fed Ex and anything else one might want to ship.)  Aargh!

Deep breath.  Amazon is refunding the money within two days (so John can go ahead and order the camera he thinks he has decided he wants), and I have 30 days to get this puppy back to Amazon before they re-charge our account.  I'll go home and come back tomorrow.

It's tomorrow now.  It is raining cats and dogs.  Thirty-mile-an-hour winds.    Thirty-nine degrees, less wind-chill.  Nothing in life is simple...  I'm down for a cup of tea and a chocolate bar - for BREAKFAST!

Christmas Gifts

Well, for Christmas John got a bullet smoothie maker (officially known as a single serve blender.)  He made us a strawberry-banana smoothie that was pretty good.  I said, "Does this mean we can make a New Year's resolution to eat healthy smoothie's every night instead of chocolate candy?"  He said, "Sure.  Right after I finish eating a handful of double-dipped chocolate covered peanuts..."

I got him a super zoomie camera.  He used to be a professional photographer - has one camera that cost over $1,000 twenty-five years ago.  He's gone through many upgrades over the years, and I bought him another one for Christmas this year.  I was just SURE I'd gotten the very exact one he'd been looking at.  Wrong.  I always get it wrong.  Give me a screw or bolt, send me to the hardware store to get a dozen exactly like it.  I will have everyone including the store manager help me, and I will inevitably come home with the wrong thing...

I told him that it is totally okay to return the camera; in fact, I DEMAND that he return it and order what he wants.  So, John spent the afternoon surfing the internet, shopping for the one he really wants.  Now, John is not like most men - he LOVES to shop.  (No, ladies, you can't have him.  He's mine!)  And so to spend Christmas afternoon singing Christmas carols and surfing the net was just his cup of tea.  He hasn't told me which one he's decided on yet, but when he does I'll get things worked out to return and reorder - as long as he's looking over my shoulder, double-checking me and then verifying before I hit the send button.

Maybe, after he gets the new camera, the bear will come back by, and we can get some really good pictures!

Christmas Eve Gift!

"Christmas Eve gift!"  That's a challenge our family has perpetrated on each other for as long as I can remember.  It's simple.  When you see or speak to a family member for the first time on Christmas Eve, and if you say "Christmas Eve gift!" first, they have to give you one of your Christmas presents right then and there.

To my knowledge, no one ever designated what KIND of present it should be:  Naughty? or nice?  One year Granpa gave me a gallon jar of whole dill pickles.  Took us a whole year to eat those monsters.  Another time he gave me a box of Millionaire chocolates.  It's the thought that counts, right?  (I wonder if I had been a sour-puss one year and a sweetheart the other?)


Over the years, as my brothers and sister moved apart, and as we have passed that tradition down to our children who have set up their own households, it's the game that has come to matter, and not the gift.

We have learned that if I call you, you answer the phone "Christmas Eve Gift!" and I lose.  (That kinda puts a crimp in holiday phone calls.)  There are arguments going around about whether text messaging counts, or emails.  When John and I were on Kauai, Christmas came to Texas six hours before it came to us.  The question then became, by who's clock was it Christmas Eve?  With Granpa and our kids, I am the undisputed champion.  (Probably because they let me be...)  But one year I totally, completely forgot.  I think it was our youngest son, Christopher, who nailed me first.  I'm not sure I have EVER heard such total, unabandoned joy come out of an adult before - which was the best Christmas Eve gift I could have.

I gotta be dreamin'!

Doin' the deer watch out the kitchen window as usual.  There seem to be a lot more animals than usual; that's cool.  Wait a minute!  What's in heaven's name is THAT?  A baby elephant!?  I blink.  I blink a few more times.  Oh my goodness!  A CAMEL?  and two GORILLAS! 

Where's the camera!  Out the front door, oonch over to the edge of the porch, back against the wall.  Slowly, ever so slowly, turn the camera on, inch my head and the camera around the corner of the house.  Perfect shot ... push the button and ... the battery is deader than a doornail.  Aargh!  I'm gonna shoot John.  (You see, it's his camera so it must be his fault.)

The alarm clock goes off, and I wake up - not surprised that the elephant, camel, and gorillas are a dream, and not surprised that the dead battery is not.  This man needs a new camera for Christmas...

Advertisements

Hey!  That's kind of interesting.  Every post has a different set of ads!  I guess I thought it was an "ad of the day" thing, but if you click on different posts you come up with different ads.  Interesting.

They also said that when I first started letting Google put ads on the blog, the ads would not be very "targeted" to the content I was putting out there.  They have this thing called a "crawler" (I'm guessing that's a program not a person :-) that "crawls" through my blog, ( "Tron" like? ) picking out key words and making assumptions as to what advertisers might be a good link.  The more it crawls around (this is gettin' creepy...) the more targeted the ads get.  There seem to be a lot of hotels and vacation kinds of ads, but I'm thinkin' a medical traveler company should start advertising here ...  but what do I know?  Also, maybe companies that have personnel that travel a lot?  I can contract directly with companies to put their ads on our blog, too.

Traveling doesn't have to be all hotel rooms and airports, fast food and no fun.  (I mean good clean fun.)  There is so much to see and do out here in the world, especially if family can travel with you!  Folks need to EMBRACE life a lot more.  It can be glorious if you let it, if you laugh about the trials and tribulations instead of letting them get you down.  Joy, folks.  It's all about joy.

Spotsylvania

Okay.  I've had my R&R.  I can go back to the Civil War and this last battleground we visited.  I really am thankful that these fields have been set aside for posterity.  One, it honors those who fought; Two, it gives all of us an opportunity to try to understand, reflect on, and come to grips with war.  Is war necessary?  Well, microscopically, if you have a neighborhood bully that beats up on his family and has no regard for neighbors or authority, somebody will have to stand up to him sooner or later or you all become victims of the brutality.  MACROscopically, it becomes nation against nation, and that's called war.

So, to Spotslyvania, where the worst of the hand-to-hand combat of the entire Civil War took place.

Remember the timeline and that all of these locations are within just a very few miles of each other:

December, 1862 was the first Battle of Fredericksburg and the Sunken Road with Lee vs. Burnside.
April into May, 1863 was the second Battle of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville with Lee vs. Hooker
Then up to Gettysburg, and back down to
May 5-6, 1864 for the Wilderness Campaign with Lee vs. Grant for the first time.

It is now May 8 - 21, 1864 in Spotsylvania.  From here on out it will be Lee vs. Grant in a series of battles leading to the battle at Richmond and nine month seige of Petersburg, and finally to the surrender at Appomattox Court House.  (If you're just finding us and want to know more, scroll down the list of blog postings to those battle posts.)  Realize how many of Lincoln's generals Lee has gone up against and defeated.  Lee really was an amazing military genius.  Grant was pretty smart himself, but he was also tenacious.

So, to the battle.  As you can see by the map, the "Bloody Angle" as it became forever known, would have been a real bummer to defend.  Grant surprised Lee, but the southerners were up to the challenge.  Grant's forces broke through the Confederate line at one point, the rebels beat them back and held them while others built a new line of defense a mile back - one that wouldn't be sticking out there and able to be attacked from all sides.

Can you imagine, looking at that picture, how bullets would be coming from every direction, from friend and foe alike?!  And there were a LOT of bullets.  So many that they CUT DOWN a 22" oak tree!

That wasn't blown up by a cannon, it was gunshots, small arms fire, that chewed in down.  An OAK !  What chance did a man have?

This is not a natural contour of the land.  This is the breastwork the rebs built by hand.  Over the years erosion and people walking on it have brought in down (which is why they have signs all over the place asking you to keep off of it.)  During the battle this would have been at least as tall as a man - and therefore a really good place to hide from all of those bullets.  Above, you're looking down the line; below, you're looking across the breastwork into the Bloody Angle.  I used to tell our sons, "use your vast and vivid imagination."  Now, imagine the ground in front of you covered in blue and grey uniforms in hand-to-hand combat, kill or be killed, no where to run...

That's about a 22" oak tree on the left.  Imagine bullets cutting it down...


If you've never been to a battlefield, the National Park Service has allowed states to erect monuments in positions where their battalions took a stand.  I am continually surprised by whose boys fought where and by the fact of how many of them were there, all in one in a group.  When someone enlists now, one at a time or ten from the same town, they are scattered across the military branch they chose to serve to lots of different places.  At least that prevents a whole region from losing a lot of its men in a single battle/engagement.

From here Grant pursued Lee to the North Anna River, Cold Harbor, Petersburg, and finally to surrender at Appomattox.

All of that fighting at the Bloody Angle, "all for nothing more substantial than ticks on the clock and a few inches of ravaged landscape."  True, but the bigger picture was a fight for states rights: the right to continue slavery in order to uphold the economic survival of the south.  When you think about it, isn't that what we are still doing today?  Not on the battlefield, but in politics, in our courts.  I used to think that it was alright for California to become a welfare state, to tax their citizens and businesses to the bone.  Now they're talking about filing for bankruptcy, and want MY tax dollars to bail them out, AND raise my taxes to do it.  Unintended consequences of total freedom ...  oops.  I swerved into politics.  But, "all for nothing more substantial than ticks on the clock and a few inches of ravaged landscape" set me off.  That statement is microscopically correct - but macroscopically incorrect.

We're running out of contract time in Virginia and will be moving on after the first of the year.  Still don't know where to yet, or whether we will be able to go back to Tyler for even a few days.  But trust me, I'll keep you "posted."   :-)

Snowfall Memories

Valentine's Snow - February 12, 2010

Since it doesn't look like we're going to see any snow here in Virginia for Christmas, we decided to pull out some old Texas snow pictures.  (Yes, it does snow in Texas.)  These are some photos of our home in 2010. 

It was just beginning to snow.

Yes, we leave our Christmas lights up as long as possible.  Good thing this year, huh?

This is shot from a high spot behind the house.  I'm so glad the Lord came up with evergreen trees; they make winter time a little less "brown."

Back to the front yard, this is our hitchin' rail for the horses. 

This is some of our stock and our Austrailian shepherd, Junior.  The horse is a Thoroughbred named July, and the donkey is Mordacai.  He's known as a "Jesus" donkey because looking down on him the coloring shows a dark line of hair across his shoulders and down his back.  Mordacai is the FUNNIEST animal and an absolute sweetheart.

Here we are in the forest (WE call it a forest - our neighbor laughs and says that in Texas it's known as a "stand of trees."  Hey!  We are both born and raised true Texans!  WE call it a forest.)  Anyway, here we are in the forest next to the puddle.  We call it a puddle because it's a pond that doesn't hold water so very well.  Our sons are in the process of digging us a REAL pond on the other side of the land.

This is the swingin' tree that our grandkids, young and old, love to hang out under in the summertime.

John calls this area "the park."  It's one of his favorite places in our front yard because it makes him feel like he's, well, in a park.

The sun is going down, the snow has almost stopped, so John had to give up on his picture taking.  I feel better about Christmas now.  Hope you do to!  May God bless and keep you this Christmas season!

The Packages Are Ready

The tree, albeit a tiny tree, is all decorated ( a lil' heavy on the tinsel for me, but John had a good time!) the packages wrapped, the meal planned -

now, where's the snow?  John keeps checking the Weather Channel, but it's not gonna change the facts:  it ain't gonna be a white Christmas in Virginia this year.  :-(

Those are the trappings for Christmas.  And I DO mean "trappings."  Do you ever feel "trapped" at Christmas?  Are you caught up in gift GIVING, but forgetting to RECEIVE the gift of eternal forgiveness and salvation?

Whatever your Christmas traditions have been, if you forgot Christ you missed Christmas completely.  I'm so sorry.  It's not too late to find Him, though - certainly a whole lot easier than finding that special gift for a loved one, and everyone can afford Him.  In fact, you can afford to give Him to ALL your family, friends, and acquaintances!  Are you certain your loved one knows Him?  Now THAT would be a very special gift to give:  the knowledge of the saving love of Jesus.  You don't even have to find a store that sells Him - 'cause He can't be bought!  Settle back and read the Christmas story - and I don't mean " 'Twas the Night Before Christmas."  God will do the rest...

BTW, did you know there are free Bible apps for iPhones?  No more excuses for not reading the Bible; its available anytime, anywhere. 

Merry Christmas, folks, from our home to yours!

Solar Flares, EMP's, and 2012 Doomsday Scenarios

Ok, ok, ok.  Don't even go there!  I'm not a Doomsdayer - but I may be a Day Dreamer.  I'm fascinated by "what if" scenarios.  Join me for a cup of tea and a chocolate bar whilst I contemplate this.

What if the perfect-solar-storm-in-2012 theory produces a giant EMP (electromagnetic pulse)? 
Are we forever knocked back to the 1800's? 
Do satellites fall from the sky? 
Do all of the electronic gadgets everyone buys for Christmas become useless paperweights for eternity? 
Do airplanes plummet to earth? 
Do newer car with computerized engines stop dead in their tracks?  (Probably not a good time to own an electric car, huh?)
Should I go buy a '57 Chevy or a '64 Mustang? (That sounds good, EMP or no EMP!) 
Or should I tootle up to Amish country and buy one of those buggies we saw? (That sounds good, too, and we have just the horse to pull it back in Texas!)

A teeny-tiny bit of Googling answers some of my questions.

Yes, a solar storm will produce an EMP, but it would have to be the PERFECT solar storm. 
The spot on the sun where the solar flare happens would have to be aimed directly at earth.
It would have to be a MONSTER event.
EARTH would have to be rotated so that our magnetic field was perfectly aligned with the solar event.

Okay, so let's say all of that is lined up and "it" happens.

In the very, very first place, we'd have about three days to see this puppy comin' - lots of time to prepare.

Believe it or not, our GOVERNMENT (or NASA) has actually thought about this and has contingency plans:  Our satellites would be put into "safe" mode so electronics wouldn't burn out, ergo they won't just drop from the sky.  (Well, they wouldn't "drop" anyway.  Their orbits would deteriorate and eventually they'd come down.  But even that won't happen if they're put in a "safe" mode.)

I suppose if we put all of our electronic Christmas presents somewhere EMP's can't reach - or simply turn them off or pluck out their batteries maybe? - they would be fine to pull out in a few days and reconnect with those satellites.

Airlines have also got contingency plans in place:  they will either not fly, or re-route their flights away from the solar zap.

Our computerized car engines?  Maybe just pull the battery out of it, too?  (The Amish buggy still sounds good, though :-) 

What about America's power grid?  Well, that is a problem.  It definitely would get zapped.  America has three separate power grids:  one covering 39 eastern states, one covering 11 western states, and one just for Texas (I suppose Hawaii has one of it's own, too.)  Probably all the transformers and transmission lines would be fried.  About the only thing electric companies could do is prepare by stockpiling transformers and power lines.  Obviously big cities would be the first to get re-wired.  Maybe if it's winter, the northern states become a priority; if it's summer, the southern states.  Electric cars wouldn't get recharged for awhile!

I'm thinkin' things would get interesting - but not life-shattering.  Guess I'll go back to wrapping Granpa's Christmas gift...

Power-less

I'm rockin' right along with a normal day, peekin' out the windows for critters, checkin' emails, makin' beds... (That's a "have to" with me.  If I make the bed the whole room seems to be clean - even tho' it isn't :-()

Suddenly I realize that there is dead silence in the house - no refrigerator hum, no ceiling fan lazily drawing warm air down from the ceiling, nothing.  I verify that there are no LED lights on the myriad of electronic equipment we have covering the surfaces of every room (chargers, printers, MyFy, laptop, tea-cup warmer...)

Yup.  The electricity is out.  It's a sunny day, but the chill will inevitably set in if the power doesn't come on pretty soon.

Well, would you looky there.  Two deer.  Right up beside the house.

I had put out more deer corn this morning - and watched FLOCKS of bluejay, a few cardinals, dove, and the occassional red-headed woodpecker come steal away the kernels.

Apparently there were some crumbs left, because the two small deer (I bet they're the spotted fawns we saw when we first came here) that hang around most often were working their way to that spot.  And they weren't even shy about it.

I caught him with his mouth open.

Just as John started to leave this morning there were these two AND a buck out here.  It was not quite bright dawn yet and both cameras refused to focus in the dim morning light - especially through windows and screens.  John tried to catch a photo as he stepped out the door before they high-tailed it, but the camera was still being contrary and he got sort of a blur.  If you study it, bite your lip, and squint, you can see the antlers.

ANYWAY... back to the loss of electricity.  After an hour the chill had seeped through my clothing.  I had sent John a text about the power outage, and updated him with the frost-bite (just kidding).  He reminded me that his fleece-lined hoodie was here, so I put it on over mine - and slipped his househoes on over mine.  (He's a size 14 shoe, and I'm a size 6.)  NOW things were gettin' toast-y!

During the power outage I snapped something like 45 photos.  Picture taking helped keep my mind off the Rudolph-nose I was getting.  I even took a picture of ME all bundled up - but that I'm not sharing with the universe. 

After two hours I was getting a bit hungry.  Trust me - nothing cold sounded good, and there was no way to heat it.  Now, if we were home in Texas where all of our tent-camping gear is, I would have had all kinds of options for cookin' up something yummy.  But alas, it's there, and I'm here.

I tried reading, but laying down all snuggled into coats and blankets made me want to drift off to sleep - or was that hypothermia setting in?  Nah.  It wasn't THAT cold! 

At just over two hours I hear humming.  Mmm-hmm.  That sweet hum of electricity!  Look out world, I'm headed for the microwave!

The Wilderness Campaign

I am really dreading telling you about this episode of the Civil War.  Of all I have read and seen about military battles, from a commander's point of view this has got to be the most heartbreaking.  It's no wonder Ulysses S. Grant wept through the night.


December, 1862 was the first Battle of Fredericksburg and the Sunken Road with Lee vs. Burnside.
April into May, 1863 was the second Battle of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville with Lee vs. Hooker

From there, Lee chased the Union army up to Pennsylvania and Gettysburg and faced Grant.  Gettysburg, July, 1863, ended all hopes Lee might have had for a successful invasion of the north. The Union lost 23,000 men and the South lost 28,000 in just three days of fighting, and it all came about over a shipment of shoes both sides wanted for their troops!  However, after the battle, instead of retreating as all previous Union generals had done (much to the dismay of Lincoln), Grant followed Lee into Virginia.

Back then, most military units (certainly in the north) would "den up" for the winter.  That's why there seems to be one-year gaps in battle timelines.

In May, 1864 Lee is back in the Fredericksburg area at a place known as The Wilderness.  The year before, some of the Chancellorville battles spilled over into this wilderness area.  As the troops began arriving here now they discover that the winter snowmelt and spring rains had uncovered bones and skulls of soldiers that had been killed back then.  Not a very welcoming sight - but what battlegrounds are, new or "used."

This will be the first time Lee faces Grant since Gettysburg; this will truly be the beginning of the end for the south.

The thickets of trees, briars and bramble that tangled The Wilderness were such that combatants couldn't see more than 15 paces in front of themselves.  From one minute to the next they couldn't see their unit flags and didn't know if their comrades were advancing or retreating.  At one point a yank and a reb showed up at a Union camp, both slightly wounded.  They had gotten completely lost, lost their weapons and all of their gear, and their inability to see more than a few feet because of the thickets caused them to have to join forces.  Who's ever side they came upon first, one would join and the other would surrender!  (Geography and conditions on the ground certainly do make a difference.)


Grant is said to have been completely inscrutable to those around him.  Neither by word, or action, or countenance could one tell what he thought after receiving good news or bad.  Lee didn't have to see him;  Lee inherently knew what Grant would do.  Lee had faced every leader of the Army of the Potomac since the beginning of war without any "R & R."  Battle after battle, year after year, Lee stood faithful to Virginia.  Publicly, he seemed to never show tiredness and certainly never showed weakness.  His experience taught him what Grant would do. 

The fighting on May 5th and 6th cost Grant 17,000 men.  The night of the 6th, Grant learned that the tangled undergrowth had caught fire from the battles that raged within.  He lay in his tent that night, hearing the cries of wounded men in the inferno, unable to get themselves out and unable to be reached by those around them.  Grant may have been inscrutable, but he wept that night, openly and unashamedly, as he heard those sounds of horror as wounded men from both sides were burned alive.  Absolutely dreadful!

I'm about ready to move on to something other than the Civil War to chat with you about.  Wars and rumors of war will always abound.  Studying them helps us hopefully to avoid them, but if they must be fought, studying old wars might teach us the tactics necessary to minimize death and maximize results.  And I agree with Lee:  It is well that war is so terrible, lest we should grow too fond of it.

Out The Kitchen Window

Some of the animals we see out of our kitchen window:

I know this is a bit cloudy looking, but focus for a second.  It's not THAT bad.  They don't have double- pane windows here; they have double WINDOWS and a window screen.  Doesn't make for good picture taking, but we've never seen birds as skittish as these Virginia birds.  Out the window is about as good as I can manage.  The view out the living room window is better because there's no screen.

This, of course, is a he-Cardinal.

And this is the she-Cardinal.  Men are always such show-offs!  But she really is pretty if you'll look closely.

These guys must be lookin' at the same thing!

Ah, ha!  They're lookin' at that BEAR!

Who happens to be in the same field as these deer! (He would be in the bottom right-hand corner...)

But animals aren't the only beautiful things about Virginia.  I love the cattails in the center of the photo.

The view from Skyline Drive is really pretty:

And this chilly sunset probably looks good to our Texas family:

The Vortex Expands

Ok.  The first battle at Fredericksburg was December, 1862, Lee against Burnside

The next battle was five months later, April 27 - May 6, 1863, Lee against Hooker.  It was actually a dual attack at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville.  I suppose it's referred to only as Chancellorsville so as not to confuse folks with the first battle.

Union General Sedgwick DID take the stone wall on Sunken Road at Fredericksburg this time - only to have it taken back by the rebels pretty quickly.

Meanwhile, 10 miles west, Lee discovered Hooker's main force trying to advance in the area around Chancellorsville.  Now, just because a name ends in "ville" doesn't mean it's a village.  Chancellorsville was actually nothing more than a huge home at a crossroad.

Those Southern ladies stood on their balcony throwing verbal misery at Hooker and the Union army that was taking over their home.  Ultimately, the house would burn down and those same ladies would be begging those same Union soldiers to save them - and they did.

Everyone was jubilant about Hooker's plan - so much so that Lincoln tried to moderate feelings by saying, "The hen is the wisest of all creation animals - she doesn't cackle until after she's laid her egg."

Lee realized Hooker's weak spot was his right flank.  So, Lee sent one of his favorite general's, "Stonewall" Jackson, meandering in the dark (but very, very quickly in the dark) down 12 miles of skinny backroads to strike at that Achille's heel.  (Does everyone know why it's called an Achille's heel?  Check your mythology.)


In the dark, Jackson came upon some other Confederates and was shot by friendly fire.  His arm was amputated and buried there (a shrine was built over the spot ) (eeew), and Jackson died shortly thereafter from pneumonia from the injury and surgery.  Lee won a great victory because of Jackson's late night ride, but lost a great general in the process.

These back to back victories propelled Lee to the North in June to a little town called Gettysburg...

Drafts and Posts

Hmmm.  I wrote "Lee's Hill" as a draft a couple of days ago, and then wrote and posted "Advertising" and "Ben and Jerry's."  Today, when I posted "Lee's Hill" it shows up BELOW the other two.  Goofy!

So, I hope those of you who receive an email every time I post noticed the newest post even though it was drafted a couple of days ago.  Confused?  Me, too.

Advertising

I'm blogging anyway; why not check out the AdSense thingy and see if I can make a buck?  Who knows, I might make enough to replace this ancient eight year old laptop...

It's terribly confusing, and I just don't know if it's gonna be worth the headaches.  Oh, well.  Why not.

So, step by step I've eased (no, wrong word - there has been NOTHING easy about trudging and fighting my way thorough this nightmare maze of how-to!)  So, again, step by cautious step I've made it far enough to actually get ads on the blog.

Today, SURPRISE, AdSense has placed an ad on our blog from J&R!!  John has been buying his camera equipment and electronics from J&R for 30 years - since way before the internet.  He used to subscribe to all kinds of tech magazines - again, before COMPUTERS!  and he buys mostly from J&R.

I feel much more comfortable about the AdSense thing now ... but I still can't figure out half of way they are trying to teach me on the "simple" how-to's  Must be a geek writing for them.  They need a blogger doing the writing, someone who doesn't talk tech.

But I'm so proud to have J&R on our blog!  Thanks, AdSense!

Now, if I could just figure out how to tell them where to send my check ...

My First Ever Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream

Hey!  We're from Texas.  We have Blue Bell Ice Cream; who needs Ben and Jerry's?

I can tell you that the selection of ice cream on Kauai was terrible.  That's strange.  You'd think in the tropics any and all brands of ice cream would be a big seller!  I was so looking forward to getting back for some great ice cream.  Unfortunately, we were only in Texas a week, never had a chance to get to the store, and there is no Blue Bell in Virginia.

All of this is probably good for my diet/waist/behind/befront/behemoth.

So, while in Fredericksburg overnight, John went to get us something for supper.  He pulled into a Wendy's and it was no longer a Wendy's.  He went for pizza and the line was a mile long.  By this time I had sent him a text asking that he stop at a drugstore and get some eyedrops.  He passed an freezer on the way to the checkout with the eyedrops and saw Ben and Jerry's.

Yup.  He picked up a pint of Strawberry Cheesecake - for a terribly high price - and that was our supper.  No spoons to be had, but I had bought a package of four metal forks (4 for a dollar - not classy, but better than plastic) a few weeks ago for a to-go meal we'd bought on one of our trips.  After washing them up I wrapped them in a ziplock baggie and put them in the pocket of the car.  John went to the car and got them, and we ate our Ben and Jerry's with forks.

Mmm-mmm-mmm.  Now I am a Ben and Jerry's fan, too!  (John bought it, so he can't complain about my behindy thing - but the price of Ben and Jerry's should keep it under control...)  But I still love Blue Bell best.

Lee's Hill

Back across the Rappahannock River on even higher ground that Marye's Heights at a place once known as Telegraph Hill, we find Robert E. Lee's headquarters.  Not much here but a three-sided shed with interpretive boards.  The view of the whole battle area is spectacular - especially after some of Lee's men chopped down a few trees.  Wish I had my binoculars with me.

This is where Lee stood when he said, "It is well that war is so terrible, or we would grow too fond of it," as he watched the slaughter at the Sunken Road. He was probably talking with his fellow generals when he said it.

Top left is "Jeb" Stuart, below him is "Stonewall" Jackson.  The other two "attended" Lee throughout the battle, Lee's "Old War Horse" James Longstreet and William Pendleton.  Before the war, Pendleton was an Episcopal minister.  After the war, Robert E. Lee attended Pendleton's church in Lexington.

Stuart and Jackson were killed in action during the Civil War; Longstreet was one of a very few generals to live into the 20th century, dying in 1904.

Lee was very nearly killed here - twice!  Once, a cannon firing it's thirty-ninth time blew up right beside Lee, and another time a Union shell landed in the earthworks next to Lee.

The interpretive sign right in front of me (yes, that's me in the top photo) shows the whole battle as seen from Lee's headquarters:

Notice top center the circle with a "v" underneath it.  That represents where a Union hot-air observation balloon was located!  I think that is really cool.  Below and to the left is Chatham Manor, the dark lines crossing the Rappahannock represent pontoon bridges, and you can easily see the open space marked by the arrow that Union troops had to cross in an attempt to take the Sunken Road.

Chatham Manor

So, you cross the Rappahannock River bridge (remembering that it certainly wasn't THIS high back in 1862!) beside the Old Stone Warehouse, and look to your left for Chatham Manor.

This enormous home (even by today's standards) was built by William Fitzhugh in the same time frame as the Stone Warehouse - started in 1768 and finished in 1771.

William and Ann Randolph Fitzhugh

(This is free: At about the same time, Austrian Marie Antoinette married the guy who was to become King Louis XVI.  The resulting French Revolution followed the American Revolution.)

The home is something like 180 feet long, containing only ten rooms, possibly because it is only one room deep (all the better to circulate air on a hot summers evening.)

After the American Revolution, Major Churchill Jones, a former officer in the Continental Army, purchased the plantation in 1806 for $20,000.  By the time the Civil War came to Chatham Manor this structure was almost 100 years old.  It was now owned by the Lacy's:

Interesting how the Fitzhugh's portraits are in color and the Lacy's are black and white.  That's because the Fitzhughs' was painted and the Lacys' was photographed!  (I figured that out all by myself!)


No battle was fought here in 1862, but it served as Union headquarters for Burnside and as a hospital for his troops during Union attempts to capture Fredericksburg.  The Lacy family was turned out and the home used in whatever manner the Union army wanted - up to and including using some of the rooms as stables for officer's horses.  Between the blood of soldiers and the poo of horses I would say some SERIOUS damage was done to the floors of this home!

I wonder if they knew that one of those rooms was used by George Washington himself as a bedroom?! and later Thomas Jefferson.  Oh, yeah.  Abraham Lincoln slept here, too.  No, really!  It is the only home in which three United States presidents slept (excluding the White House - but not even George Washington slept there.)

It stands to reason that Washington was a visitor here because he grew up just down the road on Ferry Farm.  Let's see if you can follow this:  Washington's step-grandson and adopted heir, George Washington Parke Custis, married Fitzhugh's daughter, Molly.  THEIR daughter married Robert E. Lee!  Seems it was a very small world back then.

Do you know who Clara Barton is?  The founder of the American Red Cross.  She worked and slept here during the Union occupation, as did a "Dr. Quinn" kinda woman, and American poet laureate Walt Whitman whose brother was wounded at Fredericksburg.  I'm thinkin' I remember Lafayette was here also, which is believable since he and Washington were good buddies.

The trees around the home today are enormously tall and one has to wonder if any were around during the Civil War.  A lot of them are oak trees, and they do live a long, long time.  I was surprised to find, however, this sign:

Catalpa trees here during the Civil War

Poor feller LOOKS like he's been there since the Civil War!  But I truly, truly did not know that Catalpa trees lived that long.  I love Catalpa trees; they grow really fast (nearly a foot a year), have HUGE heart-shaped leaves and almost hydrangea-size flowers in the spring, and they get worms in the summer that make the BEST fish-bait!  But live 150 years?  Now, THAT is cool to know!

Back to the First Battle of Fredericksburg

So, the Union army under Burnside has massed on the north side of the Rappahannock River (sans pontoon boats for the bridge), and Lee is massing what troops he has on the south side.  Lee tells all 6,000 residents of Fredericksburg to evacuate immediately (not realizing he has 17 days before the bridge attempt) and to evacuate essentially with just the shirts on their backs.

The Confederates confiscate all animals for military use meaning the people of Fredericksburg must walk out.  Women can be seen carrying a Bible and toothbrush in one hand and a chicken and bag of flour in the other.  Children have maybe only their favorite toy.  It's mid-December, folks, and there's snow on the ground.  How far can these people go on foot in the snow?  How long will they be gone?  What will they come back to?

There are SO many books on the military battles of the Civil War (and all wars!), but how many are written on the trials people get caught up in during war?  Hmmm.  Guess my favorite one that comes to mind is the movie,  "Shenandoah" with Jimmy Stewart.  I know, "Gone With the Wind."  I suppose similar stories abound in Europe after World Wars I and II, but I don't know of them.  And I'm finding the Fredericksburg exodus almost a footnote - nothing about what they did for 2-3 weeks for shelter.  Food had to have been a REAL problem because Lee's army ate everything in its path on their way TO Fredericksburg.

When the families left, the armies moved into the town and made like urban warfare - house to house, alley to alley.  Both sides looted as they moved (just a souvenir here and there), but they also tossed furniture and pianos and artwork out into the streets and set them afire.  (Why?) 

You can see the town behind the Union army now.  That's pretty much fine with Lee.  He's drawn the Union into his trap.  (It's a shame the Sunken Road wasn't next to the river and the town way back.)  So for a couple of days the battle rages, but eventually Burnside's men (what's left of them) are pushed back across the river, and the people are allowed back into town.

It has been completely trashed, torched, bombed out and torn down - courtesy of BOTH armies.  The folks left with nothing and came back to even less.  War may be noble, but it ain't pretty. 

At least the Stone Warehouse is still standing.  It was almost 100 years old when the Civil War came a callin', and here we are 150 years past that, and it's still here.  Remarkable.  (Ever think about that word?  Means "worthy of being, or likely to be, noticed especially as being uncommon or extraordinary."  There's another word to think on:  extraordinary.  Extra-ordinary)  Yup, the Stone Warehouse is remarkably extraordinary!

The Old Stone Warehouse

It's one block off of main street in old downtown Fredericksburg.  We had decided to to walk out onto the bridge over the Rappahannock to see if there would be a good photo op:

Not bad.  Lest you look at this and say, "What was so hard about building a pontoon bridge over this puddle," the land you see on the left is actually an island.  The widest part of the river is on the other side.  Yeah, definitely a call for LOTS of pontoons...

On the way back I notice a cool lookin' building on the left:

Notice, from the back, it's three stories high plus the attic.  When I got perfectly even with the back wall I could see it was bowed out considerably, but it looked solid enough.  However, look at it from the front - it's one story high.

This I've got to figure out, so we go inside.  What a treasure we find!

The story goes, this was built around 1770 as a warehouse.  It's right on the river which makes off-loading supplies super easy.  It is not only built of stone, but the roof is made of slate shingles - essentially ROCK shingles - so it is going to be next to impossible to burn - good plan for a warehouse, but also a good way to survive a war.  Ah, but what about a direct hit from cannon?  Check this out:

You can see where a cannonball came in through the attic, dropped through the wood flooring of each story, all the way down to the brick basement floor and blew a hole in the bricks - but that's all it did! 

You can see from the basement photo that they've been excavating layers of mud that was brought in through many floods in the past 240 years.  (There's a clue here to the number of stories front and back.) The artifacts that they recovered are upstairs in display cases.  Nothing phenomenal, but pretty cool nonetheless.

(Remember, you can click on the picture, and it should enlarge.)  

The top photo of artifacts shows a solid 16-pound cannonball like the one that came through the attic, and it shows an exploded shell filled with shrapnel (marble-size pieces of iron) intended to, well, do what shrapnel does!  (Did you know shrapnel got its name from its inventor, Henry Shrapnel?  He was a British artillery officer and invented the exploding cannonball in 1784.  Ah, the trivia I impart...)  So, anyway, the Rappahannock River continues to give up artifacts to this day - because there is so very much TO give up.

Back to the mystery of one-story vs. four stories...  It seems that every time the river floods and washes out the bridge, the city of Fredericksburg builds the new bridge higher.  Well, every time the bridge got higher, the city had to raise the road just as high, thus covering up all but the highest level of the front of the warehouse.  What was the third floor is now the first floor!

This is what I would call a very "raw" tourist stop - and one of my favorite kind.  It's only open May through mid-December because the guy who finally convinced the city to lease it to him is a "snowbird."  (He goes south for the winter.)

One thing that he did have that I have never seen before is known as an 1899 "Black Eagle" silver-certificate dollar.  It's also called a "horse blanket" because it's 25% larger than our bills today. That's what caught my eye - it's size.

I'm having computer trouble today and can't manage to flip this photo, but you can see the "black eagle."  The owner had a price tag of $195.00 - but an Internet search shows one in pristine condition going for $30,000 !!  If I had the $195 to spare I would have bought it because it is the most unique piece of currency I've seen since the $20 gold piece.  If this computer keeps acting up I'm gonna buy something a lot more useful than old currency and put THIS thing in an artifact case somewhere!