Monticello and Virginia

After running out of electricity in my camper's battery, I needed to stay at a campground where I could recharge, and have electricity to run the fan and have heat.  The nearest campground still open at this time of year was the KOA in Harper's Ferry, so I went there.  Sunday thru Tuesday were quiet there -- weekends are still busy, they said.  It was nice to stay in one place, do laundry, and get all my camper's needs taken care of, plus my Tuesday nurse visits.  Have I already said that I am working remotely from my camper on Tuesdays?  My office (Northampton Integrative Medicine) schedules appointments with me on Tuesdays for patients who need disability forms, placards and letters.  I call the patient on the phone, discuss and draft whatever they need, and send it back to the office for the practitioner to review and sign and send wherever it needs to go.  Have to have power and wifi on Tuesdays to do it.

Leaving Harper's Ferry on Wednesday morning, I met Rev. Georgia Dubose for lunch.  She is a good friend of Helen's and I wanted to connect with her.   We had a good lunch, discussing our spiritual journeys.  I hope to see her again when I'm in this area.

I had wanted to visit Williamsburg, Mt. Vernon and Monticello while in Virginia but the weather was turning unseasonably cold and it seemed wise to head south pretty quickly.  So I drove down to Charlottesville VA to at least visit Monticello the next day.  Spent the night in a Costco parking lot.  Very nice store manager who persuaded me to sign up for a membership.  Turns out they have discounted gas at their stores, as well as a good discount on tires which I'll need within the year.

But then the heat wouldn't turn on in the camper!  Wednesday AM it worked fine.  Wed. night nothing.  I knew I had adequate electricity and propane.  And so another cold night without heat, but by now I'm getting good at this!  Went to Monticello Wed. morning anyway.  What an amazing man Thomas Jefferson was!  In addition to being a thinker, writer, statesman and public servant, he was also a citizen scientist, fascinated by trees, vegetables and fruits of all kinds, architect, friend to the leading figures of his time, and . . . a slave owner.  Early in his life he wrote about slavery as an abomination, later as a horrible entanglement, and yet he only ever freed a handful of slaves.  By the end of his life he had concluded that the problem of slavery was going to have to be worked out by future generations.

At Monticello I took one tour to learn about the house, Jefferson the man, and life there, and a second tour about slavery at Monticello which was a very good look at the life Jefferson was raised into and how it shaped him.  While I can understand how he came to make the choices he did, this stain on our country will remain until we can fundamentally give up our white privilege, and it's going to be hard.

The tour about slavery at Monticello was given by a woman who said, in light of what happened in her home town of Charlottesville last year, she resolved to do something herself personally to promote racial healing, and she asked each of us on the tour to do the same.

It is a beautiful and interesting place.  

Driving from Monticello, the countryside was lovely -- large farm estates with manicured green fields, and miles of pristine fences.  The homes were set well enough back from the road that you could rarely see them, and when you could, they were grand. For me, the stain of slavery tainted the beauty.  Mile after mile of this kind of wealth, if not from slavery, then certainly from white supremacy.  

When I completed my visit to Monticello, I decided I had better deal with the lack of heat in the camper.  Fortunately I met a very nice woman named Lindy at the Harper's Ferry campground who happened to mention she had found a great RV repair guy and gave me his contact info.  That was Tuesday before I had a problem.  So when the heat didn't work on Wed. I knew who to call.  Wayne at Affordable RV in King George VA said to bring the camper by on Friday morning.  I drove to King George and stayed at a Walmart with no heat, again.  Friday morning bright and early I was at Affordable RV.  Not only did Wayne replace the thermostat and get the heat working, he also checked on the battery charging for me.  His testing revealed that the camper battery wasn't charging while I was driving, even though my car was sending electricity to it.  After an hour of searching around under the camper, he found the problem -- a missed electrical connection -- and fixed it!   Thank you, Wayne!!!  Having the camper battery charge while driving means I will have electricity overnight most nights and not need to pay for a campground as often.

Friday night was forecast to be really cold in King George -- 25!  I was afraid my camper's pipes would freeze.  Checking the Weather Channel for various locations, it seemed that going east along the coast would get me warm enough.  So I drove down through Virginia countryside.  There are many good two and four lane roads across Virginia running through woods and fields.  This is what the countryside between King George and Chesapeake VA looks like in November:

Caret VA

Jamaica VA

Eastern Virginia has many rivers and inlets from Chesapeake Bay, as well as swamps, marshes, and salt marshes.  There are lots of bridges and causeways soaring over the marshes and rivers.  With the blue water sparkling below, I wanted to take pictures every time I went over one, but there is no shoulder on a bridge wide enough to pull over, and traffic is usually going 55 or faster.  So I tried resting the camera on the top of the steering wheel, still had both hands on the wheel, just a couple fingers on the camera.  

Rappahanock River, VA

Nansemond River, Suffolk VA

I stayed the night at the Cracker Barrel in Chesapeake VA, far enough south to avoid the very cold night.  In the morning, I went into the Cracker Barrel for breakfast.  I had scrambled eggs, fried potatoes, grits and fried apples, orange juice and coffee.  Used to love grits when I was young and my black lover made them for me, along with samp, greasy greens and fried catfish.  Often made fried apples for the guys for breakfast when I lived on the farm in Kansas.  So these "comfort foods" appealed to me, as much as to all the other folks who go to Cracker Barrel.  Seems like Cracker Barrel is all about nostalgia for good times gone by.  Like Trump's "Make America Great Again", the nostalgia may have been for times that never were as good as the memory of them.  As I recall life on the farm, for instance, we did have some warm moments of family and community, but we also worked from the time we got up until we fell into our beds exhausted at night, and still the work was never done.  It may have been a simpler life, but it wasn't even close to an ideal.  So blessings on all those who remember good times and forget the bad.  If only life were as sweet as we remember it.