Virginia and First Week in Tunkhannocke

We back-tracked from Rocky Knob campground on the Blue Ridge Parkway to Mabry's Mill.  Mabry built and lived here between about 1900 and 1930.  He built a very clever mill, particularly since the water volume wasn't that great.  He began with a grist mill (where I bought some buckwheat flour and some corn grits).  When the water volume was sufficient he ran the saw mill at left.











 He also ran a woodworking shop.  Here are all the wheels that had belts connected to them to run the woodworking tools.
















                   The tools included this double jig saw which he used to make wooden wheels.  The jig and the holes allowed him to set the size of the wheels.  He also had a clever gadget that made tongues and grooves on flooring.









The mill is probably the most-photographed image on the Blue Ridge Parkway.  There was a ranger who was building a chair from wormy chestnut wood rescued from the split rail fences along the Parkway.  They were built in the 1930's due to a kill off of the trees and now have deteriorated further.  He rescues the wood and makes handmade chairs.  He had a horse that held the wood while he used a hand tool to make the dowels.  He had a lovely example with a caned seat from hickory bark.




This shows the gear on the water wheel.














Mabry collected water from two streams.  This is the flue from the stream that is presently powering the mill.















                 
                 
 Mabry got ill and couldn't continue to keep up the mill, though his wife continued to work there.  This shows the peg construction used on the flue.













We continued along the Parkway until we came to Trail's Cabin which had "a right fine view."  The cabin was common for this area.











Towards the end of the Parkway we came to the remnants of a logging railroad built in the 1920's.















                 

 We continued on to Skyline Drive, 105 miles long at 35 mph through Virginia and drove to a campground.  The views were similar to those along the Blue Ridge Parkway, but we love the pace and the views and the cheap camping.








We arrived in Tunkhannock and our job for this summer.  Bob and I will be converting all this 2" styrofoam into roof insulation.  We began on Wednesday tearing down a wall in the area that is going to be the bathroom on the second floor and removing all the tongue-in-groove paneling, sistering out the rafters to 6" (which involves ripping 1/4" strips and nailing them to the existing rafters) and adding vapor barrier.  Then we will add three sheets of styrofoam (with lots of cutting and fitting) and a fourth piece that covers it all.




Here is Bob cutting out the octagon for a window at each end of the second floor.
















Thursday night there were tornado warnings and the wind blew harder than Markus had ever seen it.  It rained hard and we lost electricity.  Thank heavens for the gas generator which powered the fridge and a few lights and the gas stove in Snoopy which provided dinner.  The sunset was stunning.








In contrast, this isn't the sunset.  This is a natural gas well that is burning off the methane.  This process lasts six weeks and apparently sounds like a jet taking off.  There is a new pipeline through our area, but the desire to put a pipeline through our property seems to be on hold.  The drilling by Chesapeake is slowing way down due to the company's financial problems.

N. Carolina and Virginia

On my way back from visiting Madelyn Wessel and Tony McCall in Charlottesville, VA I stopped in Greensboro, NC at the International Civil Rights Museum which is located in the Woolworth store where the NC A&T students started the sit-ins to desegregate the lunch counters in 1960.  The museum consists of a tour which was led by two very well-informed guides (though they rushed us along so that I couldn't read all the exhibits).  The last guide was a student at NC A&T and gave an impassioned speech at the end about how we can't just sit on the efforts of the civil rights leaders, but have to go out and do something.

 While Bob played disc golf, I visited the Reed Mine (the location of the first gold find in America in 1799).  Reed's son found a huge nugget in a stream and took it home where it was used as a door stop until it was identified and sold to a jeweler for $3.50 (it was 17 pounds).  A gold rush followed, but Reed wasn't a very good business man.  There was occasional mining of the stream beds and some underground mining (though the water table is at 50' and if you dig lower you have to pump).  I got there before the museum opened and walked the 2 1/2 miles of trails and eventually went back and got the self-guide (which included an underground portion).  This is one of the access sites to the mine.






While Bob played disc golf, I visited the Gantt Museum of African American History (a fantastic museum that looked at the contributions of African Americans to all aspects of US culture), the Mint Uptown Museum of Arts and Crafts and Modern Art (which included an exhibit of Madelyn Albright's pins and the statements she was making with them).  Charlotte has a lot of good museums and a nice downtown, though it was hot.  This is the Duke Energy Building next to the Green in downtown.  We also had dinner with Emily and Glen Stephens (Bob's niece and husband) and tried a lot of delicious southern food.









On Friday I caddied for Bob (carrying his bag) while he played in the second foursome.  The game was halted for severe thunder, lighting and rain two holes before the end.  The guys were very amiable and another wife also tagged along.








We then decided to head up the Blue Ridge Parkway (469 miles at 45 mph through North Carolina and Virginia).  The National Parkways are gorgeous and boast great campgrounds, no commercial traffic, no billboards and beautiful overlooks.  The Parkway is the most-visited park in the country (20 million people/year).   This is a typical view of the mountains covered by heavy forest.






We stopped Saturday evening in Linville Falls where we took two hikes.  First we went down to the base of Lower Falls, past a yellow jacket nest.















 Then we hiked above the falls and looked down on Lower Falls and up to Upper Falls.  We were surprised to find the campground not very crowded. There was a wonderful campfire presentation by the NC Historian of the Year in 2010 who, with his wife and two kids, talked about the Civil War in this area of Appalachia.  He described it as like the war in Bosnia (an excuse for people to get back at their enemies and where the war continued for about 5 years after the South surrendered).  He talked a lot about local people and she talked about what it was like to be home alone with the kids trying to protect yourself and keep you livestock from being taken.  There were a lot of deserters in this area or people hiding to avoid conscription.  In addition Northern troops moved through the area too.
 Their five-year-old daughter talked all about her outfit (drawers, petticoat, dress and apron and yellow socks dyed with onion skins).  It was really interesting and they were dressed in appropriate clothes.









The next day we took off again, going over the Linn Cove Viaduct on the side of Grandfather Mountain (the last portion of the parkway built in 1987).  To preserve the special area the parkway is on a viaduct and each section was cast on site and then attached to the previous section so that the soil and trees weren't disturbed.  There was only one square section among all the sections built.







We stopped at the Moses S. Cone House (he made his fortune in denim and built this house to enjoy the cooler weather).  Ultimately he deeded the property to the state.










We finished up at the Blue Ridge Music Center, just over the Virginia line.  There was a jam going on in the breezeway (it was raining).  The museum is really interesting (full of interactive exhibits, great old TV shows and recordings) and there was a live gospel concert.








This was a great washtub base.

















We stayed for the gospel concert which started with this quartet of acapella singers accompanied only with guitar.  They have been singing together for 30 years and it showed.  Though the message was a little too religious, the music was great.









They were followed by this band (the Church Sisters) who had just played for Obama on a campaign swing through Virginia.  They are 16-year old twins, their 18 year old brother pays guitar, their dad plays electric base, their cousin plays mandolin and guitar and an unrelated guy plays banjo.  They had wonderful harmony, but their music choices were not so great.  However, I enjoyed the music.  We had been listening to a great bluegrass station playing from Isothermal Community College in N.C. for a good stretch of the parkway.  It seemed appropriate to listen to blue grass while driving the Blue Ridge Parkway in the midst of this type of music.  We drove on an hour after the concert to Rocky Knob campground.

N Carolina and Virginia

 We left Ohio and headed south on I-75 to Great Smoky Mountain National Park.  On the way it actually began to rain hard (the first real rain since we left Oregon).  We spent a miserable time on the interstate caught in a huge traffic jam due to an accident and some road repair.  We finally reached Cosby Campground on the northern edge of the park, which is less popular than the route through the center.  We put up Snoopy between showers and the next morning meandered through the woods.  There are no real views in the Smokies, just deep lush forest.  It has some of the most diverse forests in the world.








We got to Charlotte NC, left Snoopy at Emily and Glen Stephens' (our niece and husband) house and checked into the hotel before checking out the first of two courses.  I walked around with Bob.  It was hot and steamy.  This is a basket at Sugow course, in the middle of a flame tree.  In the afternoon on Saturday I went to the Museum of the New South in downtown Charlotte.  It tells the fascinating story of Charlotte from the end of the Civil War.  Cotton becomes king and both poor white and freed blacks become sharecroppers.  By the 1930's fully 80% of all blacks and 50% of all whites were sharecroppers.  Eventually the textile industry developed with the arrival of the railroads and NC boasted the highest rate of women working outside the home of any state in the union.  Charlotte-Mecklenberg was the site of the first court-ordered bussing to integrate the schools, which was done with a minimum of violence and was one of the cases that went to the Supreme Court.  While the court-ordered bussing was in effect no school had greater than 60% of one race; since the end of the court order the schools have all become 80%+ one race.  The museum had lots of interactive exhibits, including some wonderful music from the 1930's (Carter Family, Monroe brothers) which was recorded at a local radio station which had the largest listening area in the country.
On Sunday morning early I headed north to Charlottesville, VA to visit some old friends from Portland.  Madelyn is in the general counsel's office and Tony works at the med school.  I explored the campus Sunday afternoon.  This photo is of the basement of Thomas Jefferson's rotunda.  Each floor has three oval rooms set into the circular shape of the rotunda which leave an hourglass-shaped central hallway.  The rotunda and the Academic Commons are undergoing major renovation.




 Edgar Allan Poe was a student at UVA for a brief period in one of the rooms along the Lawn.  It is unoccupied except for this raven sculpture in front of the garden window.  I got filled in on all the politics surrounding the firing and rehiring of President Priscilla Sullivan.  Like so many public universities, the state provides less than 10% of its funding but exerts massive control of its operations.  The rector of the Board of Visitors was dissatisfied with the speed of change of the president during her two-year tenure and engineered the firing using an executive committee.  There was massive faculty and student uproar and she was reinstated after 18 days and now both the rector and president (both women) have issued a joint statement of how they are going to work together.  We'll see.






While Madelyn and Tony worked on Monday I went on the "Presidential Trail."  I investigated Michie Tavern, near to Jefferson's Monticello, still operating as a restaurant.









I then headed to James Monroe's home, Ash Lawn-Highland, which abuts Monticello.  It is now owned by the College of William and Mary and I had a delightful tour of the facilities by what I suspect was a student.  Monroe (who was a US Senator, Minister to France, England and Spain, Governor of Virginia 4 times, Secretary of State and of War and president) lived here.  He wanted to retire here, but did not.  The house is actually quite small.  It was a plantation and Monroe had slaves, but it never made much money because he was gone so often.  This photo shows the overseer's office and house on the left and a building with a guest room and domestic slave quarters.  After lunch with Madelyn I headed to Montpelier, James Madison's home.  His family had lived there for several generations before he was born.  His grandfather was murdered by slaves.  His grandparents built the first brick house and his parents eventually created an identical duplex in which they lived.  Madison went to local boarding schools, was sent to Princeton, and came back to be tutored by a local clergy man.  He served in the Continental Congress and then went back to Montpelier to study and draft what eventually became the US Constitution.  He read 400 books in 7 languages to look at philosophers, politicians and others' ideas of government.  He had earlier married Dolly Madison, a widowed Quaker from Philadelphia, who was shunned/banished by the Quakers after her marriage to a non-Quaker (I didn't know that Quakers did that).  They held slaves and never freed a single one.  The photo of the grey structures shows the location of the kitchen, smokehouses and some domestic slave houses.  After drafting the basis of the Constitution and going to the Constitutional Convention, he also wrote the Federalist Papers to encourage its ratification and the Bill of Rights (which started out as 17 amendments, was reduced to 12 by the Congress, but only 10 were adopted).  He, like Monroe, was Secretary of State under Thomas Jefferson prior to becoming President.  During his tenure he fought the War of 1812 without violating provisions of the Constitution (there was an interesting exhibit on the Constitution talking about things various presidents have done that violated the Constitution, running from Lincoln's sedition acts to George W. Bush and the Patriot Act).  Dolly was beloved and after her death was given an honorary seat in the House of Representatives (the only person so honored).  The photo on the
                   left is of the formal gardens.  The photo below is of Montpelier (the original portion of the house was only the tall right hand portion without the portico).  Madison made it into a duplex by adding the tall left portion and eventually he and Dolly hand drew the design to add the two lower wings on each side and Jefferson loaned them his designer and builder to build the house.  Dolly Madison fell on hard times and sold the house soon after James' death.  Since they did not keep detailed records like Jefferson, there is only a little original furniture in the house.  It was ultimately purchased by the DuPont family when it decided to return to the US from England and they lived there until the 1980's with the last daughter developing a huge equestrian facility including a round race track, a permanent steeplechase course, a facility for retired thoroughbreds, etc.  The house was renovated between 2000 and 2005.  Now they are trying to find some of the original furnishings.

Saugatuck, MI, Louisville, KY and Cincinnati, OH

 We spent three glorious days in Saugatuck, MI with Carolyn and Paul Jarvis at their cottage.  It's so wonderful to sit on the beach and read (3 books in 3 days), swim whenever it got too hot, eat dinner together, enjoy great conversation and RELAX!  They have been coming to Saugatuck for 30 years and stay in this lovely old cabin right on the beach.  Life is very slow-paced and relaxed (everyone doing their own thing).  Bob played a great disc golf course nearby.  It was hot (in the 90s) and we had to use fans every night and couldn't eat on the screened porch because the sun shone in and made it too hot.


The day after we arrived their neighbors from Bloomington arrived.  Bruce is the manager of the NPR station and Jo is a retired advancement officer from Illinois Wesslyan.  Bruce is a wonderful musician and we enjoyed them immensely.  Sarah, Julia's sister, arrived late on the 4th.  We sat on the beach and watched fireworks all up and down the beach without braving the crowds and the heat.






 We drove to Louisville, KY to visit Marge and Bob Manke.  I also had the opportunity to meet three of Bob's friends (two had been roommates and one was a musician friend).  We had delightful times talking about the past, seeing wonderful guitars built by Walter, eating delicious sushi and sharing lovely meals with Marge and Bob.  It was still stinking hot (more than 105) and we stayed indoors, though I did convince Bob to give me a tour of Louisville (which I had never seen).  We looked at the Ohio River, the medical school, several parks, and drove through the oldest cemetary (which includes hundreds of graves from Civil War soldiers and the oldest Civil War monument carved by a German man honoring an all German regiment).

On Saturday we drove on to Cincinnati to visit Andrew, Julia and Elsa.  Here she is sharing her train set (she is very enamored with trains).  She is precocious and talks a blue streak and is very understandable.  She also has a healthy sense of self and is spreading her independent wings.  It was stinking hot and humid in Cincinnati too, so we mainly stayed inside.










On Sunday we decided to go for a walk along a stream bed so that Elsa could throw rocks in the water and get wet.  There was very little water in the stream, so it was easy to walk in the stream bed.  Elsa threw a lot of stones and also waded and fell down in the water.  As Julia says, she has learned to take a complete change of clothes when she goes outside with Elsa.






A cardinal in the stream bed.  It was relatively cool because it was in the shade.












Our rock thrower.

















                   Waiting for Andrew to get the car and keeping our feet cool.












On Monday, while Julia went to a doctor's appointment, Bob and I went to a park where he could play disc golf and Elsa could play in a playground.  There was no one there except us, and Elsa slid and crawled and played.  It was a lot cooler and overcast.  When Bob came around on the 15th hole, we walked along with him while Elsa pointed to where the disc and the red baskets were.  Today I got to participate in her swimming class where she showed little fear in jumping in the water and going underwater.