One cannot visit Charlottesville without paying attention to Thomas Jefferson. But before that, I neglected to include a picture of the exterior of The Clifton main building.

Architect, scholar, farmer, educator, inventor, statesman, author of the Declaration of Independence, and President of the United States – those are some of the things he is known for. And I’ve undoubtedly left out a few of his fields of accomplishment.

Anyway, Jefferson was a incredibly accomplished individual. We all know he was author of the Declaration, but he either drafted or assisted in the drafting of many laws. He designed Monticello, his home on his plantation here. He invented a machine that made an exact copy of the thousands of letters he wrote in his lifetime. He wrote a book describing everything known about Virginia. His home had extremely large windows and skylights, very unusual for the time.

We took two tours at Montecello. The first took us through the first floor of the house, which included the public rooms and Jefferson’s bedroom, study and library (1). The upper floors are an extra cost item (and extra time), so we passed. And we took the Slavery tour, which was really more of a lecture and a tour. It was interesting, and like the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, depressing.

After leaving the Presidency, he founded the University of Virginia, given his belief that only an educated citizen could effectively contribute to public life. He not only founded it, he was the first Regent, and he designed the original campus which is still in use today. It’s quite beautiful. Sadly, it started raining when we left the parking garage on campus, continued until returned to the garage later.

The centerpiece of the old campus is the Rotunda, which was inspired by the Panthon in Rome. It was designed to be a library for the students, and the upper floor still serves as perhaps the most beautiful study hall in the country (2).

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As I write this Wednesday morning, we’ve packed up our stuff and we’re about to head home. We should arrive before dinner tonight.

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(1) So where are the pictures of the first floor? No pictures allowed there. Only the exterior and basement.

(2) So where are the pictures of the campus? It was raining …

Yesterday’s trip on the BRP was all about mountains. Today, while the Parkway stayed it’s course along the Blue Ridge, the landscape changed. It became less hilly, and there were farms along the sides as we continued north. There were also fewer “sites” to stop at. Despite that, the vistas were beautiful.

It’s clear that I like to capture that beauty in photographs. But others have their own approach. Most people do take photographs, of course, and most of them use their phones. But a few do it the old school way – using paint, ink or pencil to capture their vision.

My favorite “big picture” from today was smaller than yesterday’s.

We stopped at a cutout labeled “Cascades” (1), which had a sign promising a gentle 30 minute round trip walk. So off we went. We came to a stream and a small wooden footbridge after about 15 minutes, but the path continued on, down stone steps. And we could hear the water falling below. Sally headed back up, while I continued down.

At the bottom of the steps I was about midway down a cascade of perhaps 100′ (2). Sadly, there was no good photo to be had there. Instead, I took a more intimate picture back at the wooden footbridge.

We were starting to think about lunch by now, and decided to head to the Blue Ridge Music Center at MP 213. Since they promise live music all day and an exhibit on music development in the Appalachian region, we assumed they would have food.

No such luck.

The museum was interesting but very small. The blue grass music was decent, but the musicians looked ready to fall asleep any minute. So we left and headed onto Mt. Airy, NC. Why Mt. Airy, you say?

Mt. Airy is where Andy Griffith grew up, and it was his childhood memories of a small, rural town that informed his first TV shows, “The Andy Griffith Show” and “Andy in Mayberry”. Mt. Airy is Mayberry.

Mt. Airy has taken Mayberry to heart: the are stores and shops named after all the main characters. There mid-60s sheriff’s cars crusing the street. There are at least two Barney Fife’s walking around, and we saw one Gomer Pyle. Quite kitchy. We passed on the theme restaurants and found a wine bar where we got some tasty food.

We found our hotel down in Dobson. It’s a Hampton Inn, quite nondescript, but clean, spacious and comfortable.

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(1) Cascade Falls is located at MP 272, and is in E.B. Jeffress Park.

(2) The Wikipedia entry says 250′, but I’m sceptical.

We left our B&B in Asheville this morning. We’ll miss some aspects of the Inn: the cozy feeling, the bright room, the friendly hosts and other guests. We won’t miss the breakfasts served family style; not the family style, but the food itself. This morning was some sort of quiche or omelette with corn. I ate it, Sally pretended. And not the uncomfortable chairs in our room, which were okay for lying back and sleeping but not for sitting and reading, watching TV or eating.

Today’s plan was simple: drive about 100 miles up the Blue Ridge Parkway to Blowing Rock, NC. The Blue Ridge Parkway is a “National Parkway”(1) that runs 469 miles through North Carolina and Virginia. It is two lanes the whole way, with numerous scenic overview cutouts and other places to stop and enjoy the outdoors. It has been the most visited unit of the National Park Service almost every year since 1946. It mostly follows the Blue Ridge of the Appalachian Mountains.

We entered at Mile Post 385, and plan to follow it to MP 0.

As this was our first time on the Parkway, we weren’t quite sure what to expect. My best guess was that it’s like driving through any of the big National Parks out west, only longer. We stopped at some scenic turnouts, and then at a couple of specific sites.

Craggy Gardens was the first stop, and the first time I went to the wrong viewpoint initially. I stopped at the picnic area, and saw a sign for a trail heading to the viewpoint almost a mile up the hill. Fortunately, I turned back after a short while as the sky looked completely socked in. After heading back out on the Parkway, we came to the viewpoint – right on the highway. No hiking required!

Our next stop was Mount Mitchell, which at 6,684′ is the highest peak east of the Mississippi (2).

On our way up to the peak, we stopped for lunch in the state park that surrounds the mountain. It was simple and edible. The views from the peak were very nice (3).

The last major stop was Linville Falls. Again I managed to go to the wrong viewpoint first. In fact, I managed to go to both of the viewpoints I didn’t want before finding the one I wanted. And believe me, the trail signs couldn’t have been more clear. I was just not reading them correctly.

We finished today at our stop for the night, the Chetola Resort. To get this far on the trip, we’ve driven just over 2,000 miles, averaging almost 60 mph and 28.7 mpg. Today we averaged 34 mph and 19.5 mpg over 110 miles. To say life moves slower on the Blue Ridge Parkway is an understatement.

The resort is a pleasant surprise. Their online pictures don’t do our room justice (4). There were drinks and snacks on the hall when we arrived, and we had a nice dinner in the restaurant downstairs. No need to search for a place to eat!

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(1) A National Parkway is like a National Forest or National Monument. It is administered by the National Park Service.

(2) Mt. Washington is #11 at 6,288′. All of the top ten are in the Blue Ridge area.

(3) I actually stopped in the parking lot below the peak. But not very far below.

(4) I think mine are better, but you can be the judge.

We had two or three objectives for today: See Biltmore, walk around Asheville, and have a decent dinner. We accomplished all three, though not without a bit of juggling.

Biltmore is the massive estate of George Vanderbilt, grandson of the Commodore who built and made a fortune from the New York Central Railroad (1). The statistics of the place are staggering: 250 rooms, 180,000 square feet, 7,000 acres, … . One can go on and on. George built it starting in 1895 as a summer place to escape the heat of the city. It is still owned by his descendents, the Cecils. Between the Great Depression and increased taxes, his heirs were forced to open it to the public starting in 1930.

Today it is a major tourist attraction, including hotels, restaurants and shops along with the tours. Sally and I both found it interesting and well run (at least the portions we visited and one restaurant as well as crowd management).

The architecture and decorating is over the top, although not nearly at the level of Hearst Castle. Vanderbilt literally spared no expense in creating the house and furnishing it. Even the servants’ quarters and work areas were spacious and airy.

The 7,000 acres remaining today are a small piece of the 100,000+ acres that were originally part of the estate. In 1914, Vanderbilt’s widow, Edith, completed the sale of 84,000 acres to the Federal government to form the nucleus of Pisgah National Forest. The grounds that remain today were landscaped by Frederick Law Olmsted (2), and consist of formal gardens and a larger park area. There is a Chihuly exhibit in the gardens area – this guy is everywhere we go.

We were hungry by the time we finished the house and gardens, so we went into the nicer restaurant in the old stable building. I wasn’t expecting much, just high prices, mediocre food and lots of garlic. But the prices were reasonable ($13.95 for a roast chicken dinner), the food was fresh and tasty, and Sally had several choices free of poison. And like the rest of our experience at Biltmore, it was efficient and friendly.

We drove back into downtown Asheville (after a 20 minute drive just getting out of the estate) and walked around a bit. But the weather was gloomy with periodic drizzles, so we went back to the Inn. I made an executive decision not to fight another restaurant battle (i.e. calling around to try and find a garlic-free option) but went to the Whole Foods, bought some wine and prepared food, and we ate safely in our room.

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(1) There’s a statue of the Commodore on the south face of Grand Central Terminal looking down Park Ave South.

(2) Olmsted famously designed Central Park in New York City.

For our last morning at Blackberry Farm, the tentative plan was to spend some time going around the grounds. Either an easy stroll in the woods for Sally & me, or maybe driving our golf cart to look at some of the things we passed during the geocaching hunt yesterday.

It was not to be.

We woke up to rain. Enough rain that we called the desk to have a real car (1) pick us up and drive us down to the unformal dining room for breakfast.

Enough rain that driving the golf cart anywhere was not just unpleasant, but unsafe – they don’t brake very well on wet pavement. In fact, I found they can barely keep from sliding down some of the steep pitches on the cart paths. Enough rain that the thought of any outdoor activity was shelved.

So we had breakfast, looked at the clouds hanging over the mountains, enjoyed the hunt paintings in the dining room, packed and headed out for another rainy drive in Tennessee.

When we got to Asheville, we were hoping to leave our bags at the Inn and go for a walk in town. But – it was drizzling, so we took a look at the town through the windshield wipers and went back to the Inn to listen to our Fearless Leader ramble (3) for an hour.

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(1) One of the Lexi.

(2) They use white table clothes for dinner. This is the breakfast/lunch setup.

(3) He did much more than merely ramble, none of it good.

Blackberry Farm really is a very nice place. Nothing is a problem – except the weather.

We woke up this morning to another wet day, with high humidity and evidence of rainfall. It didn’t actually rain while we were out, but I had to dry off the seat in our golf cart and put a blanket down before we ventured out to breakfast (1) (2).

We had planned to try geocaching before lunch. Geocaching is a games where you attempt to locate a cache based on geographic coordinates and perhaps a clue. In the larger world, a cache can be established by anyone, who then publishes it. They will often leave a small notebook for geocachers to sign, and hide a trinket or charm in the cache.

Here, we were given a small stamp and a booklet to record our finds, and each cache contained a stamp and a booklet to stamp and sign. We were also given a Garmin GPS preprogrammed with the coordinates of each cache. The GPS only gets you within a couple of dozen feet of the cache. then it’s up to you to find it. The picture shows our equipment and the small metal box which is hidden at each location.

We expected to spend an hour or so, but after 1 1/2 hours we broke for lunch. It was 3:30 when we finished, having found all but one of the eight caches.

Part of the fun in this context is that you are forced to travel around the entire property (in your golf cart), as the caches are hidden by the various activity sites.

We had a nice dinner in the un-formal dining room. You’ll recall the formal dining room required men to wear their jackets into the dining room; this one does not. The food is similar, although the menu is different. The wine list is only a dozen pages long, rather than 100. The decor was old English, meaning lots of bad paintings of fox hunting on the wall. The formal room was rustic – it’s built as a large barn, with open beam construction and a very high ceiling.

Many people, including us, periodically ask for extra towels from housekeeping. This being Blackberry Farm, they just kept coming.

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(1) In typical Blackberry Farm style, our cabin comes with special hand towels to wipe down the seats, and a special blanket to place on the still damp seat.

(2) Truly first world problems, I know.

Our streak of not-great weather continued today in Walland, although it actually didn’t prevent us from doing what we wanted.

Blackberry Farm is very spread out, and our cabin comes with a golf cart. Our first excursion was last night, when we had to find The Barn (the so-called formal dining venue) in the dark, after checking into our cabin in the afternoon and not leaving until dinner. Suffice to say we made a few wrong turns.

But this morning we had no trouble driving to a different part of the property for breakfast. After a bit of thought we elected to eat outside, as did most of the guests.

After breakfast I took a soggy walk in the humidity. The grounds are beautiful, even with overcast skies.

Our planned activity for the day was a cooking demonstration with one of Blackberry’s chefs. While it is advertised as a group activity, the group today was just Sally and me. And Rachel, our chef-instructor. She gave a great explanation of how she was preparing our customized three course meal, and the three of us had a great time chatting for 2 1/2 hours. And the meals she prepared for us were delicious.

We are right on the edge of the Great Smokey Mountain National Park with it’s extensive outdoor activities and 900 miles of trails. Blackberry has their own hiking trails, about 9 miles worth. I used about 4 of them this afternoon, which was plenty for me. The hike wasn’t that hard, and the temps were in the low 70s, but the humidity was about 100%. I was soaked by the time I got back – and the drizzling rain didn’t help.

They have plenty of other activities: archery, skeet, tennis, fly fishing, biking, etc. We’ll concentrate mostly on the gourmet food. Which is how we finished the day, with another great meal in the Barn.

Marred only by having to drive the open golf cart back to our cabin in a light drizzle.

After ten days of never using the gym facilities at any of our stops, I decided to use the gym at the Hermitage. Unfortunately, the hotel leased the gym and spa to Netflix for filming today, and it was closed. Rather than take their offer to use a nearby public gym, I decided to take a walk outside. It was almost-raining, and I figured even if it started drizzling, I’d wind up less wet than if I used the treadmill.

Well, I figured right. I wound up less wet, even though it started raining pretty steadily about 15 minutes before I got back. While I was out, I did come across Nashville’s government plaza. The architecture and layout was quite impressive.

By the time we left left Nashville it was raining lightly, but as we headed east on I-40, it turned into heavy rain. Visibility was poor, the road was slick, and cars (and trucks) were staying below the speed limit. About halfway to our destination, the rain eased, the road dried, and we all resumed the national speed limit of 10% above the posted limit.

Between the rain, the 200 miles, and the one hour time change as we came back into Eastern Time, we didn’t arrive at Blackberry Farm until after 4:00. This is one of those places where they spare no effort to cater to your needs. Once you pull up and walk into reception, your car disappears and all of your bags are quietly put into one of the house Lexuses (Lexi?). You sign a bunch of waivers, payment agreements, cancellation policies, etc. on an iPad (1), and then you get driven to your cabin in the woods.

Which is very nice. But designed for the twentieth century. The room actually has a fair number of outlets, all in the baseboard along the floor, and none close enough to any table to be able to charge your devices without placing them on the floor (2).

There were other initial problems in the cabin which needed attending. There was some very nice cheese left as a welcome snack, and which contained garlic (3). The soap and shampoo were laced with lavender, which we also had to call about (4).

Dinner was at their “formal” restaurant. Formal has a silly definition: jackets required for men. Now, you’re thinking ” what’s silly about that?”. But grasshopper, you are thinking the colloquial use of that phrase, which is shorthand for something like “men should wear a jacket, some nice slacks and a button down shirt or the equivalent”. But here it means exactly what it say: the gentleman who escorted us to our room said one merely must wear a jacket. Jeans and a t-shirt with it are perfectly acceptable.

That’s what the man said.

And that is silly.

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(1) I felt like I was at the Hertz counter: “please initial the CDW, please initial here to decline buying a full tank of gas, please …”.

(2) Which they were happy to rectify by sending someone over with an extension cord.

(3) Which they were happy to rectify by sending someone over with a fruit plate, and removing the poisonous cheese.

(4) Which they were happy to rectify by sending someone over with Bars of Dove soap.

Friday we went to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.

I took no pictures.

I usually don’t take pictures in museums, not because they don’t let you, but for one of two reasons:

– the scenes are usually uninteresting

– taking a picture of a picture (or sculpture, or …) doesn’t appeal to me

The museum itself was moderately interesting. If you are a real fan, then they have a pretty solid collection of artifacts related to your favorite artists: guitars, shoes, boots, belts, costumes, hats, suitcases, etc. There are a few interpretive displays to help understand how the blues combined with Irish music to create traditional country music. There’s little interpretation of how country morphed into today’s blend of country, pop and rock.

In the evening we went back to Broadway to see some more music in the bars. Like last night, what we heard was far from the music that used to be broadcast from the Grand Ole Opry. The song we heard more times than any other was (wait for it …) Don’t Stop Believing. I always liked this song back in the day (it was released in 1981), but I’m suffering from severe over-exposure now. It’s everywhere – weddings, bar mitzvahs, political rallies, Memphis, Nashville, on my Pandora mixes. Enough already!

Here’s some more of the playlist from last night:

• Play That Funky Music (Wild Cherry)

• Country Road (John Denver)

• My Girl (Tempations, Rolling Stones, and everyone else)

• Everybody Wants To Rule The World (Tears For Fears)

• Drops of Jupitor (Train)

• Sweet Caroline (Neil Diamond)
• You Shook Me All Night Long (AC/DC)

There were also straight country songs, but they were outnumbered by the rock and pop stuff

I really don’t mean to criticize the musical tastes of people around here. I liked most of the music I heard, country and not-country. I just find it amusing that Don’t Stop Believing is the most popular (by the number of performances I heard) song in the home of country music. In one bar, the band (who were very good) asked the audience “do you want to hear more country, or pop, or rock” and rock won by a substantial margin.

It was crowded Thursday night (don’t these people have to work?), and Friday even more. And by 11:00, people were losing their inhibitions somewhat.

Many years ago, we visited Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, Israel. We subsequently visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC. Last year we visited the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Today we visited the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee.

Human antipathy and cruelty to “others” is universal and endless.

This museum is built in, and alongside, the Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered 50 years ago on April 4. He joined a long list of Americans murdered because they fought for civil rights, or were simply African American. His death was sadly not the last.

Slavery in the Americas was massive and pervasive. By 1860 55% of the people in Mississippi and South Carolina were slaves. Louisiana, Florida and Georgia were all mid-40s. Overall, 13% – about 1 in 8 – people in the US were slaves.

The battle for freedom and equal rights began before the African slaves ever reached our shores, continued on the plantations, through the Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the Civil Rights movement of the mid-20th century, and to today.

The Uber driver taking us back to the hotel asked if we enjoyed the museum; “enjoy” doesn’t really describe it. But we were very glad to have gone.

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After resting up for a bit, I went out for a walk. It was 95 degrees, sunny and humid today, so I wasn’t expecting to get far. But here’s what I found.

There’s a Gibson guitar factory here which gives tours, but I had no reservation and couldn’t get in. But the showroom was a colorful cornucopia of guitars.

There is a city beyond Beale Street’s three blocks. For instance, Main Street is a long pedestrian mall served by electric streetcars. There are, however, almost no pedestrians to be seen. Is it the heat? There are restaurants and discos, shops and offices. But I saw extremely few actual people.

The Mississippi River is only a few blocks away. Other than a tourist riverboat, and a barge train heading up-river, there was no one there either.

After dinner at a nice restaurant on Main Street, we walked back to Beale Street to get another music fix.

What we found was the Bike Night on Beale. Hundreds of bikes and bikers completely fill Beale Street’s three blocks every Wednesday during the summer. There was a competition of glitz, and a competition of volume between the bikers and the bluesmen.

If you not only like music, but like to know about how it came about, then there are two must-see sights in Memphis: Graceland and Sun Studio. The two are intertwined: Sun Studio is where Elvis auditioned for Sam Phillips and where he recorded his first earth shaking albums.

Sam Phillips was a Memphis recording engineer who got tired of seeing other record labels make the big money off the records he recorded, and started his own record company in the 1950s. What is arguably (1) the first rock-‘n’-roll record, “Rocket 88” by Jackie Brenston, was recorded there in 1951. Ike Turner composed the song and played keyboard. The list of artists who recorded there includes Howlin’ Wolf, BB King, James Cotton and Junior Parker. Later, rockabilly and country artist such as Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis came through.

But it was a 19 year old kid who pestered Phillips for a year that set off a chain of events and changed the music world in 1954. Elvis Presley, playing with two musicians that Phillips had hooked him up with (5), cut “That’s All Right”. And the rest is history.

Sun Studio itself is tiny, and the studio is lined with vintage instruments and equipment still used several days a week for recording sessions.

After lunch we went out to Graceland. The “Mansion” is a large house which wouldn’t look outsized in a lot of upscale neighborhoods in the New York suburbs. It is incredibly glitzy, in a 1960s and 1970s kind of way. The property contains a number of outbuildings, including a horse barn, racquetball court, a garage for golf carts, etc. All the trimmings of someone who had no constraints on what toys to buy.

Across the road, there is a large museum/theater/shopping/eating complex. We watched a bit of one of Elvis’s terrible movies, where he played the singer in a band who also is a race car driver (2). We saw a lot of glitzy costumes. There are rooms dedicated to Lisa Marie Presley, his only child and heir (3).

We also saw glitzy clothing in Lansky Brothers, the so-called “Clothier to the King” (4). While Sally encouraged me to go for it, I resisted.

This being Memphis, I couldn’t resist going back downtown Beale Street to hear some more blues.

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(1) The argument is made by Sun Studio and Sam Phillips.

(2) Spinout, (1968), also starring Shelley Fabares as a romantic interest.

(3) Lisa remains owner of the Mansion itself and 15% of Elvis Presley Enterprises, which owns all of the licensing rights to Elvis and his work.

(4) So-called by Lansky Brothers.

(5) Scotty Moore and Bill Black, who would perform in Presley’s band for many years.

The last post told you about the Peabody Duck March: a bunch of ducks swim around in a small lobby fountain all day, then the hotel sells a ton of drinks as tourists hang out in the lobby for upwards of an hour before to watch them walk down the red carpet to the elevator.

Yes, the ducks walk down a red carpet and take the elevator to their living quarters on the roof.

We happened to get back to the hotel from our afternoon excursion at exactly the right time, so we bellied up to the rope to watch them walk, I mean March, up close. Little did we know that we were in for a special treat today: there was an Honorary Duckmaster assisting in the ceremony.

Christine Williamson, Miss Tennesse 2018!

She successfully helped to herd the ducks down the carpet and into the elevator. We were very excited to be there to witness this historic event!

Monday we took the longest one-day drive we’ve ever done: 420 miles, going from Lexington south and west to Memphis. While we left in the rain, it was pretty uneventful except for when the iPhones’ clocks all changed an hour. I didn’t realize that the line between Eastern and Central time runs through the middle of Kentucky and Tennessee. This actually gave us an extra hour on a day when we could use it.

The Peabody in Memphis is an institution, and they have their renowned Duck March in the lobby twice a day. As the name suggests, a bunch of semi-trained ducks walk from the elevators to the lobby fountain in the morning, and back in late afternoon. We managed to arrive and snag a choice (although not prime) viewing spot among the crowds for what is ultimately watching some ducks walk for about a minute. But the hotel gets to sell a load of drinks while everyone is waiting.

The lobby is quite nice and ornate. The room itself is not up to (our) modern standards – only a tub shower, no minibar, ugly carpet, no obvious color scheme other than “all”. We can see the Mississippi River a few blocks away from our window, and both Arkansas and Tennessee across it. And there is a concierge on the floor, along with a nice buffet breakfast and afternoon drinks (1).

But we didn’t come to Memphis for the hotel – we came for music and music history. In the evening, we walked over to Beale Street, a few blocks away. Beale Street is three blocks of bars with a lot of music, mostly blues. We settled into one and had dinner, and wound up staying for the first hour of the show. The Eric Hughes Band was rockin’.

After walking Sally home (2), I came back to find some more music and watch the people in the street. Despite Memphis being 63% black (3), The people I saw were 95% white, and 50% old (4). We were pretty much all tourists, as further evidenced by the big busses parked a couple of blocks away.

None of that stopped the musicians, however. I heard everything from blues, to great funk/soul, to three white boys playing acoustic guitars, to a poor black woman singing Hotel California by reading the words from her phone and making up the melody as she went along.

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(1) The afternoon drinks don’t start until after the renowned Duck March, as they wouldn’t want to stop you from buying drinks in the lobby.

(2) Like a good southern gentleman.

(3) 2006-2008 American Community Survey, via Wikipedia.

(4) My eyeballs.

The area around Lexington has two main exports: thoroughbred horses and bourbon. We decided to spend the day visiting the second of these, as we are more likely to consume that product in the future (1).

There is a marketing group of distilleries which together run the Kentucky Bourbon Trail. Which is really not much more than a list of distilleries grouped near each other. I looked at the group near Lexington and chose three to visit. Then our schedule (2) wound up with us being in Lexington on Sunday, when all the distilleries run shortened tour hours. Then I thought none of the tours required reservations, when it turned out that several do. So the end of all of this is that we wound up visiting two distillaries today rather than the three we had intended. Which, in turn, wound up being perfect.

The first stop was Wild Turkey. $11 per person for a one hour tour, including a tasting of four varieties. The tour guide was mediocre, the tour was superficial, and the bourbon was just okay.

The second stop was Buffalo Trace. Free. Caleb, our guide was excellent. No reservations, first come, first served. The tour was 90 minutes, Very detailed, with losts of questions and answers. The tasting yielded two drinks Sally liked, plus chocolate candy chasers.

I think I mentioned the other day that this hotel chain – 21C Museum Hotels – is serious about their art. Here are a few samples from the Lexington branch.

We finished off the day with a great steak dinner at Tony’s, a few blocks from the hotel.

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(1) The last time either Sally or I was on a horse was in college, when we took horseback riding to meet half of our PhysEd requirement. It didn’t end well.

(2) Many of you know that we rescheduled this trip from the spring, which resulted in the days we are in certain spots becoming suboptimal. But all is good.

Saturday we took a long drive to Lexington, the heart of horse racing and bourbon in Kentucky. As we knew, this trip involves more and longer drives than our previous ones, because as we’ve experienced the places closer to home we need to drive further to see new stuff. This drive was 280 miles, and took us almost five hours including a stop at our new favorite fast food place, Sheetz (1).

We’re staying at the 21C Museum Hotel. Their deal is that they actually have art galleries in their public spaces, and the exhibit at the exhibition hotel was very enjoyable. The hotel itself is very modern and streamlined compared to the country inns we were in for the last two stops.

After dinner, we walked around a bit and came across a Latino Festival around the block from our hotel. Music, food, people in costume, etc.

Sunday morning I went for an early walk. Saying the city was quiet is an understatement.

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(1) I mentioned the other day I had no idea what the name Sheetz means. I now know: the chain was started by Bob Sheetz in 1952.

We left our little Inn after a hearty family-style breakfast with our new friends from last night. The innkeepers served a full breakfast, but you got what they made – in this case, a cheese omelette, sausage, fried potatoes, English muffin, a pear swimming in sweet cream, etc. While it wasn’t to our taste, everyone else seemed to like it.

On our way, we made a quick stop in Harper’s Ferry, another historically significant location about 20 minutes from the Inn. Harper’s Ferry is where the abolitionist John Brown attacked a US armory, and was ultimately captured by an Army unit headed by Colonel Robert E. Lee. Today it’s a National Monument and a restored village, which is very cute. Unfortunately, the weather continued to not cooperate and we left after about 30 minutes, as it was drizzling.

But not before Sally scored some retro candies in a retro candy shop.

The trip down to Lewisberg, WV was pretty much all interstates. About 3/4 was heading south on I-81, which was chock full of trailer trucks. Several of the drivers didn’t seem quite in control of their rigs, moving in what seemed to be an uncontrolled fashion across their lane. This made me pretty nervous, and I kept my distance as much as possible. Then we headed west on I-64, which took us across the mountains, was much more picturesque, and had almost no trucks.

Lewisberg is the self-proclaimed “cutest town in America”, and all four blocks are indeed cute. Our hotel, the Historic General Lewis Inn, is shabbily elegant. Which is to say, it was probably very nice 150 years ago, but could definitely use an update. The bathroom in our room is definitely smaller than the one on our cruise ship last year (1). The electrical wiring is all surface mounted on the walls, as the rooms didn’t have outlets when it was built.

And it goes without saying that there were stairs. Many stairs.

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(1) Sally insists that the hotel was built without en suite baths, and our bathroom was originally a closet. I can’t argue with that.

Today we drove about 270 miles down here to Maryland. When I selected this place to stop, I was trying to find towns along the way to Lexington, KY to break up the drive, but it turns out this is where the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest Battle of the Civil War, was fought 156 years ago this weekend. About 87,000 Union and 38,000 Confederate soldiers fought here, and 23,000 of them died on September 17, 1862.

More about that later.

As I mentioned previously, we packed a little differently on this trip, making an attempt to isolate some stuff that can live in the car. For this first stop, at least, it worked – I carried less, and less heavy, stuff up the flight of stairs to our room (1). It remains to be seen if this organization deteriorates over time.

We pulled off the road for lunch and found a chain we have never heard of before, Sheetz (2). It’s a gas station, convenience store, and restaurant. You order on touch screens, and can extensively customize your order: we got turkey subs, and chose bread type, quantity of meat, size of sandwich, toppings, spreads, dressing, etc. The food was tasty and fresh.

We’re staying here one night at the Antietam Overlook Farm, and it indeed overlooks the National Battlefield. We did the driving tour this afternoon, and unfortunately the on-and-off rain made it less enjoyable (?) than otherwise (3). “Enjoyable” is a difficult word here, as we were where 23,000 men – almost 1 in 5 – died in a few hours. This battle was a tragedy of errors on both sides. Apparently, Lee attacked because he thought the Union army was smaller and in poor shape; in reality, they were in better shape than his army. Similarly, McClelland was tentative in pursuing Lee before and after the battle because he thought the Confederates had more men than they actually did. Lincoln fired McClelland for failing to finish off Lee, which could have shortened the entire war.

I only took a few pictures there, because (a) the weather was bad, and (b) all you see are grassy fields and trees, with monuments to the various Northern units that fought there. It’s only reading about what went on that you begin to appreciate it.

As you drive around, you see the spots where various fights occurred. It’s hard to picture these poor men dying at a rate of 32 per minute. Of course, the big shots back in Washington and Richmond were not in any immediate danger – but isn’t that always the way of war? The old fools make the war, and the poor and young die.

It’s clear to me, at least, that the old fools running the Confederacy were wrong for so many reasons – chief among them, that they were sending their own youth to die so they could continue to enslave other human beings. But were the old fools in Washington right? They were fighting primarily to prevent the southern states from leaving the Union; slavery – at least in the South – was something they had long acceeded to. Was it worth 620,000 American soldiers’ lives to keep the idea of the United States alive?

In any event, 156 years after the Battle, we’re staying at a lovely little inn.

We had a great dinner at the Bavarian Inn, just across the Potomic River in West Virginia. It was the first time in WV for either Sally or me. We ate in the Ratskeller downstairs rather than the fancy, white tablecloth restaurant upstairs.

When we returned to the Inn after dinner, we found the five other guests sitting in the lounge chatting and enjoying an after-dinner drink. We joined them and we all chatted about retirement, traveling and grandchildren. Very pleasant.

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(1) Our rooms are never on the main level. And these small places never have elevators or luggage porters.

(2) I’m not sure what the name is all about, but they play with it on the menu: you can get “burgerz”, “wingz”, etc.

(3) I seem to recall the weather was equally poor when we toured Gettysburg 12 years ago.