Saturday we had to pack up and move to another campground as the first one we stayed at was fully booked over the weekend. After moving to the Williamsburg KOA, we spent another day taking in Colonial Williamsburg, some of the shops there and the main museum again. It's all pretty cool.
We had done some research, regarding celebrating Canada Day in the USA, and found a backyard BBQ in Yorktown about a half hour south of Williamsburg. Unfortunately the person hosting this BBQ came down with a bad cold and had to cancel. Too bad...:-(
We decided to drive down to Yorktown anyway as we were getting a bit "colonialed out" and had heard about the cool river walk and historical main street with restaurants and little shops. Sounded nice. Well, it would likely have been much nicer if the temperature wasn't hovering in the low 100s. However to be truthful, there is really bugger all there. The riverwalk had a couple of cafes but no shops to speak of (one small, but nice, custom rug hooking shop). The historical main street is just that. A couple of little old houses with a couple of shops selling tacky tourist stuff. Not much to see.
The saving grace, for us, was the National Park Battlefield visitors center. Aaaah air conditioning! Great displays etc and excellent short movie about the role Yorktown played in the American Revolution. The park rangers usually give a 45 or so minute walking tour of the battlefield but on this day, being as it was so stinking hot, they were doing a 5 to 10 minute quickie. We declined.
While in Williamsburg, the severe thunderstorms that hit the entire area hit us as well. Late in the evening one night we laid on the bed in the trailer, opened the curtain and watched the massive lightening show as the entire sky was constantly lit up. The KOA in Williamsburg is ok but their layout leaves a lot to be desired. We were located near a bath house and were constantly having people walk through the middle of our site. Very annoying and when we asked them not to walk through occupied sites, they gave us this stupid look, said sorry and proceded to walk through other sites. At least they then avoided ours, but it was a constant stream.
On Monday we set out from Williamsburg with the intention of staying near Charlottesville where Thomas Jefferson's Monticello is. On the way, we stopped and phoned one of the local campgrounds. They said they had room but they didn't have any power and neither did other campgrounds, or anyone else in the area. They have been without power since the storm on Friday. In this heat we need some power to at least have the fan on so we decided to keep going west up into the Shenendoah Valley where it turned out to be a bit, but not much, cooler.
We stayed Monday night in Harrisonburg and had hoped to get the car serviced the next day but the Nissan place there was booked up until Friday. We had a good look around the historic area of Harrisonburg, had a fabulous dinner in a restored old building downtown and decided to head farther north to Winchester at the north end of the valley rather than wait around until Friday. Tuesday morning we drove back into Harrisonburg to see the Virginia Quilt Museum where they had numerous fabulous old quilts on display. On the way back to the car we stopped in at the local Harrisonburg Farmers Market where we chatted with an organizer and compared this market with the Comox Valley Farmers Market where we now live. They're all terrific!
After that off we went north up highway 11 which doodles along parallel to the interstate through numerous small towns. Very pretty drive but slow... it took a couple of hours to go the 60 miles from Harrisonburg to Winchester then add a couple more hours for rest and lunch stops. But, we were able to make an appointment to get the car serviced on Thursday (some places being closed on Wednesday July 4th).
When we checked into the Candy Hill campground we asked for two nights with a hold on the third night while we looked into getting the car serviced. They said ok and had us taken to our site. About an hour later I went back to the office to confirm the 3rd night as we knew we could get the car done; at that point I got another stupid look... "...but, there's a problem, your site is booked for Thursday!" What? Good grief, an hour ago all was well with a hold on the third night! Anyway, we ended up moving that afternoon rather than waiting until Thursday.
Once all settled (again), we headed off in search of groceries and other goods. Guess what... we forgot to close the windows and the ceiling fan in the wee trailer. We were way across town when in a matter of minutes a terrific wind and pouring rain storm hit. By the time we got back to the trailer there was water running in through the roof fan, the TV which had been sitting on the foot of the bed was dripping wet, our duvet was wet, ie when we gave it a bit of a shake, water ran out the bottom.. etc etc etc.. We put the duvet in a dryer and that was ok but the TV???
Wednesday we decided to head over into West Virginia to Harpers Ferry. A nice short 40 minute drive into West Virginia (add another state to the trip footprint). The main focus on Harpers Ferry, for tourism purposes, is definitely the John Brown raid of 1859 which is highlighted in the excellent little John Brown Museum, although other aspects of the historical significance of the town's location and the impact of the civil war are also on display.
Later that evening we decided to try out the TV... all worked ok so it looks like no damage done there. Thursday I took the car in for service (Oil change, tire rotation, general checkup) and all is good so far. Remember the busted taillight from last week... well I asked this Nissan service rep about it. She came back some minutes later and said that the Nissan rep in Williamsburg is correct in that it is a "Canadian part", however she took the extra step of calling Nissan Canada only to find out that the Canadian part number is exactly the same as the USA part number. She said they could have the taillight ordered and it would likely be in on Friday. We decided to just leave well enough alone for now, for a couple of reasons: 1) the part doesn't arrive Friday and we have to stick around here until Monday and 2) they might try to install the part and find other body damage that prevents the install. We'll have it looked at when we get home where we can get all the damage assessed at once for insurance purposes. Besides, the tape job has survived at least 3 horrific rain storms so it should be good for the rest of the trip... and we know where to get more spiffy clear duct tape!
After the car was serviced, we drove down into historic downtown Winchester. They have a lovely 3 block pedestrian walk with restaurants, sidewalk cafes, boutique shops. Nice... this is sort of what we had hoped Yorktown would have been like. We had an excellent lunch consisting of really good cold cucumber soup and a salad. After lunch we wandered around and ventured over to the George Washington Office Museum where we got to see a lock of George's hair. Our lives must be getting close to being complete. We have seen a lock of Mohammed's beard hair (in India) and now George Washington's curly locks. The office (museum) is where Washington, as a 17 year old did his work as a surveyor for the county.
Later in the afternoon we drove around the historic area and saw some of the damage from the storm last week. Lots of large and small branches down all over the place and some trees as well. For example the yard of this beautiful old house...
... where the old tree busted apart in the wind and took out several sections of their beautiful cast iron fence. You can see the tree was somewhat rotted out on the inside of it's trunk. They should just take the whole thing down now. Made us think that we are glad we had all those old Walnut trees removed in our yard before we left on this trip. Back at the campground, we called a couple of places south on the Blue Ridge Parkway to see if we could get reservations for Friday and Saturday night. One of them was the place, near Charlottesville, we tried on Monday. They are still without power. Apparently lots of places throughout DC, Virginia and West Virginia (and possibly beyond) are still without power. We were able to make reservations at a couple of other places for those two nights.
Friday we set off to drive the Skyline Drive which is a 105 mile zig zag (max 35 mph) highway along the top of the Shenendoah Mountains through the Shenendoah National Park and leads into the northern end, at mile 0, of the Blue Ridge Parkway. The drive has some nice scenic overlooks giving great panoramic views of the Shenendoah Valley. Very pretty...
The views are very scenic but the elevation reached is not all that high (max was around 2900'). We see this as "soft scenery", nothing so far to compare with more "rugged scenery" out west.
Meanwhile the record breaking hot spell has continued to settle in over the whole area. The temperatures have consistently been in the 38 C (102 F) range with a couple of days hitting 42 C (that's about 108 F) not counting the humidex factor. Luckily we are doing most of our driving in the heat of the day (air conditioned car), all places we stay have pools and it generally cools down considerably at night (although some nights it has been more than a tad warm). The thing that gets us though is the humidity; something we'll get used to in Courtenay. We decided that after this last couple of weeks, it will be difficult for the weather in Courtenay to get "too hot"!
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