Sunday April 19

As we were preparing to leave Front Royal, Virginia, Carson called and said that the subject of his morning’s photo shoot had postponed. He offered to take us to breakfast before we hit the road. We went to a local place and enjoyed a couple more hours together.

We then headed south toward Charlottesville, Virginia. We had a nice drive through the Virginia countryside before making our way to Thomas Jefferson’s home, Monticello, just outside Charlottesville. In the late afternoon we bought tickets for a tour of the house. In contrast to the small group tour we took at Fallingwater, we were in with about 20 others on this 45-minute tour. It was very interesting to get a view into the life of the early American Renaissance man. We intended to go into Charlottesville and drive around, since we had been told that it is a lovely old southern city. However, it was near dark and we needed to make progress toward our next destination, Columbia, South Carolina.

We headed on down the road. More rain was falling and we got tired around Lynchburg, Virginia. Unless we have planned on a specific place to stay for the night, I usually will start searching for possibilities on my iPhone. Supposedly, Lynchburg had a city park with RV parking spaces. In short, we found ourselves in what was a scary-looking neighborhood to us, or as I started repeating – “Bad town! Bars on windows! Bad town!” I don’t think they have worked all the bugs out of those online maps and directions yet. Out of there we flew to find some other free place to park. Once again we settled on a Wal-Mart parking lot. Noisy but well lit.

Saturday April 18

Today we drove most of the day working in one stop in Berkley Falls Virginia before reaching the home of our nephew, Carson, and his wife Brenda in Front Royal Virginia. They live in a community that consists of very steep winding roads and driveways that would never pass our local planning department codes!
We parked near their community clubhouse since there was no way we could get in and out of their driveway. Carson likes to scare you when he drives in to it and suggest that you hold your arms over your head like you re on a roller coaster. It worked, I was scared. I thought he was exaggerating when he said it was like a ski jump going down to the house…he was not, it is steeper.
We enjoyed a lovely dinner at the Lucky Star Café, a tour of their photography studio and a visit to their home before going back to the trailer for the night.

Friday April 17

This morning we awakened to blue skies and warm spring sunshine. The perfect day for visiting Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater house near Mill Run Pennsylvania. We went ahead and splurged for the “in-depth” tour which allowed us access to a couple of rooms that are not on the usual tour as well as the opportunity to take photographs throughout the house. I am not allowed to post those pictures but will share them another time. Eight of us were lead on the two hour tour by a woman named Uta who was not only well read on Wright’s work, but passionate about the preservation of it. The home was built in the 1930’s for a wealthy Pittsburg family. I have always admired Wright’s style and have visited several homes he designed and built but not until this one did I grasp what a genius the man really was.

Down the road a bit we visited a second, less famous, Wright house named Kentuck Knob. This home was easier to imagine oneself living in but had the same attention to detail and functionality throughout. This was a much shorter tour and afterwards we took a walk through a meadow filled with interesting sculptures from the owner’s private collection, including three-foot wide section of the Berlin wall.

We visited the little tourist/whitewater rafting village of Ohiopyle before returning home for the night.

Thursday April 16

Finally a clear morning. Even though Joe usually gets up around 6:00 and I get up by 7:00, it is usually close to 9:00 before we are on the road. We got back on I-70 and drove eastward through eastern Ohio. The towns started looking older, especially the downtown buildings. We passed through the narrow northern panhandle of West Virginia for a few miles. Wheeling, West Virginia was a very old looking town to our eyes. We crossed into Pennsylvania and pulled of the interstate at the city of Washingon, which is just a few miles southwest of Pittsburgh. This was the first place where we had to pay more than $2.00 per gallon for gas. Here we picked up a takeout dinner for the evening at a Bob Evans restaurant. We stopped in at an old, old hardware store. A persistent four year old boy kept asking us why we were parking in front of his house. When we told him we were going to the hardware store he said, “Well this ain’t it!” You had to be there.

Leaving I-70 we headed southeastward down old US-40 which is also called the National Pike”. On through Uniontown and down to the little town of Farmington where we drove north on state highway 381, through the village of Ohiopyle and on to Yogi Bear’s Jellystone Campground at the village of Mill Run. The place was pretty sleepy. They were just starting to clean things up for their summer business. I think the bears were still hibernating. Trees were not quite ready to leaf out in this northern Appalachian mountain area called the Laurel Highlands.

Wednesday April 15

At 7 AM we went to the Airstream service center and signed in. A guy towed our trailer into to service area from the Terraport with a tractor while we checked out the spacious customer lounge. Pretty soon the mechanic who had been assigned our trailer came in and took us back to the trailer so we could explain what needed to be fixed. He was all about getting things fixed to our satisfaction. We liked that. We picked up few items in the parts store and walked next door to HoBo’s cafe for breakfast where the heating stove burned shelled corn. It was another cool rainy day. We went to the Laundromat and washed clothes before returning to the service center. Bill the mechanic called us back in again to show us how the work was going. A 2:00 we took the daily tour of the Airstream factory which was guided by a retired employee named Don. The tour was very informative. We learned a lot about how the trailers are made. Don told us that eighteen months ago they employed 460 people at the factory. Now there were 100 workers on the job. A sign of the times.

After the two-hour tour, Bill showed us the finished work. We were happy with it and soon we were outside hooking the trailer back up in a light rain that felt like it was about to turn to snow. At 4:30 we headed east toward Columbus where we would once again get back on I-70. In Columbus we made our first stop at one of the popular Bob Evans restaurants for dinner. Anxious to get eastward, we drove on to Zanesville, Ohio where we parked in a Methodist church parking lot at 11:30. Finally the rain stopped and we had a good rest that night.

Tuesday April 14

This morning saw us cross the big (really big) Ohio river into the state of Ohio. Today was another rainy day. The sun didn't even try to come out today. The hills of southern Ohio slowly gave way to the flatter farm country of the central part of the state. We arrived at the small town of Jackson Center at 5 PM. The Airstream service center was closed for the day. On the grounds is a small RV park called the Terraport. We parked and hooked up to water and electricity. This was the first time we had done so since we left Grand Junction. When our trailer doesn't have an outside source of electricity, the 12-volt pump, lights and furnace are powered by two RV batteries. When we plug into electric service, a DC converter power the 12-volt stuff, plus we then have regular 100-volt AC power. That allowed us to turn of the television for the first time. Water is pumped from a 23 gallon tank. When we connect to a water hose, the pump and water tank are bypassed. Water pressure is higher and showers are longer.

Before dark we donned our rain gear and walked the back lot where several Airstreams were parked. Some of them were quite old. Before we got to Jackson Center we had seen a total of three Airstreams. Now there were Airstreams everywhere. Next door was the factory with many newly built trailers awaiting shipment. 8 or 9 others parked in the Terraport. We had called ahead on Monday and learned that the service center had no power. Now we were worried that their work would be backed up and that they might not be able to get to get to our trailer at the appointed 7 AM Wednesday time and how that might effect our subsequent plans.

Monday April 13

Stopped at a Flying J truck plaza in Waddy, Kentucky. In addition to gassing up, we emptied the wastewater tanks. In RV parlance, you have your grey water tank and your black water tank. More about that later, but I can tell you that once you have made an RV dump, you'll never listen to the Doobie Brothers "Black Water" the same way again. Headed north from Lexington, Kentucky toward Mayslick, sometimes spelled Mays Lick to visit Gary and Maelynne Anderson. We stopped at an auto parts store in the town of Paris where Joe bought some sort of electrical contact cleaner in a spray can to help make sure the trailer plugin for the lights and brakes worked properly. Joe said in his fake British accent, "I just think things should work properly." I talked with Gary and he determined that we should arrive in about an hour (5 PM). After we got back on the road we discovered that we had crossed over into the Eastern time zone and we had lost yet another hour. We were an hour behind before we ever got out of the parking lot.

North of Lexington are many fancy, fancy horse farms. The sun tried to come out but clouds continued to follow us. At some point in the recent past, it seems that all the fancy horse farm owners got together and decided that white wooden fences around the horse farms were out of fashion. All the fancy horse farms now have black wooden fences. Not a white fence to be seen.

We arrived at the Anderson's at 6:30 PM. After they showed us around their lovely new residence, they took us to dinner at nearby Blue Licks Battleground State Resort. What a nice place! While Maelynne and I caught up, Gary showed Joe his guitars. Gary has built up an impressive collection of Martins, Gibsons and other acoustic guitars and Joe was rightly awed. Their dog Harry watched for deer and other critters that might be wandering from the forest onto his wooded yard.

We slept in the Anderson house with a steady rain lulling us to sleep. Gary made a fine breakfast on Tuesday morning and shortly thereafter we said our goodbyes and continued our journey to the Airstream factory at Jackson Center, Ohio. It was a lovely visit and we hope that all of their Colorado friends will have the oppotunity to visit them soon. Our visit was much too short.