The New House

I took TJ to the airport this afternoon and he made it on the plane back home smoothly and without mishap.  Before he left he took a whole slew of pictures of our new house.  I won't include all of them here, but will hopefully give you enough to get a sense of the place.

The front yard

A closer view

The view from across the street. Those front bushes need trimming!

Looking across the front porch

Looking across the back deck

More back deck

The view from the back deck.  The blue your see is the small lake behind us.

The back yard

Under the deck looking at the basement French doors.

Inside the basement

The front entry

The kitchen

A view of the family room from the kitchen eating area.

The intrepid blogger rushing to meet his deadline.  Not even the interloping feline can distract his razor sharp focus.

Thank you for coming along with us on our trip across the country.  Not sure when, or if, we'll have the chance for a trip like this again, so our adventure is not one we will soon forget.  I really enjoyed writing this blog, so thanks to The Man in the Road for encouraging me to put fingertip to key in the first place.  Until our paths cross again:

May those who would tailgate flee at your wrath

May those who would forget their turn signal be smote with lightning
May those who would cut you off be stricken with a tire flat
May those who aid you in your journey be rewarded with good fortune

Day #7: Washington D.C.

Thanks for giving me the chance to rest up and catch my breath before writing up this day #7 post.  HHJ, T-Ray, TJ, and I started the day by driving about a half hour down to Cobb Island at the very southern tip of Charles County, MD.  There we had breakfast at Captain John's Crab House, right on the water on the mainland side on Neale Sound off the Potomac River.  We haven't tried them for dinner yet, but they serve a great breakfast.

After a short drive around Cobb Island we headed back home to prepare for a whirlwind trip to Washington D.C.  We drove up to the nearest Metro station (Branch Ave.) and took the train to the L'Enfant Plaza station, which is just a block or two from the D.C. mall (the big long grass thing, not the shopping center.)  Since we had limited time we decided to see some of the memorials first, so we headed down to the Washington Monument.  On the way TJ got some shots of the Capitol Building.

We also dropped in on Mr. Smithson.

The James Smithson statue and the Smithsonian castle.

And finally, the Washington Memorial itself.  It was closed because they are still checking it for damage following the earthquake a couple weeks ago.

Some images of the Washington Monument

We didn't go any closer, but got a long-distance shot of the White House.

Since we were there on 9/11 we could see that the security was at a high level.  We kept getting buzzed by a Park Police helicopter.  We know the President was in New York earlier in the day, so we wondered if the copter was checking things out in advance of the President's return.

Tough to get a shot, but this helicopter flew low past us a number of times.

After visiting with George we headed over to Abe's place.  On the way we stopped at the World War II Memorial.

The World War II Memorial.  Each pillar represents a state or U.S. territory.

We continued down to the other end of the reflecting pool to see Abe.  Unfortunately, the reflecting pool is being renovated and was completely torn up, but the Lincoln Memorial is as awe-inspiring as ever.

The Lincoln Memorial

And finally, the Vietnam Memorial:

The sun was quite warm, and we had walked a long way to get to all these monuments.  We stopped for some ice cream and water on the way back toward the mall, and debated over what to try to see next.  We opted for the American History museum, but it was already after 5:00 and they were closed for the day.  After that we realized that we were all too tired to do any museums justice, so we decided to pack it in and head back to the Metro.  TJ got one more good shot in before we left:

The Capitol and the Washington Monument.

By the time we got back to La Plata we were all hungry, so we headed straight for Captain Billy's Crab House on the banks of the Potomac.  We took a gamble because the road to get to Captain Billy's was washed out in the recent flooding in the area.  (In fact, southbound 301 heading toward Virginia has spots that that are torn up and still under repair.)  But we happily discovered the road is just fine.  TJ got to try authentic Maryland crab cakes, HHJ opted for a bowl full o' mussels, T-Ray -- a connoisseur of all things noodle -- had the kids' mac & cheese, and I enjoyed the potato-crusted cod.  Starting the meal off right was a basket of hush puppies complete with butter and honey.  A great meal to cap off a terrific, if tiring, day.

TJ gots lots of pictures of the house, so the next post will feature those if you are interested.  In the meantime, TJ flies back home tomorrow afternoon so the true end of the adventure is at hand.  I will return to the new house here to start making sense of all the boxes and make plans for how to embark on my new life here in Maryland.  Until the next post, so long for now.

Day #7 Delay

We had a full day today, so full that it is too late and I am too tired to try to post a full recap of the day's events.  In brief, we went out for breakfast near Cobb Island on the banks of the Potomac, took the Metro into Washington D.C. to show TJ a few of the sites, and had dinner at Captain Billy's, also on the banks of the Potomac.  So a more detailed account of those happenings and the promised house pictures will need to wait for tomorrow.  Until then, good night for now.

Day #6: Bulls Gap, TN to La Plata, MD

Our fifth and last Best Western night and it appears we have traversed the country while avoiding bedbugs at every stop.  The first order of business was a hot breakfast at our Best Western.  It included everything Kimberly had told me about when we checked in the night before, though I never did see the pancakes she mentioned.  No specific stops planned for the sixth and final day of travel except for Fredericksburg near the end of the journey.

We were surprised to wake up in Tennessee to, off all things, fog.

Didn't I leave fog behind in the Central Valley?

We ran in and out of fog all the way through Tennessee from Bulls Gap to Johnson City, and it finally burned off for good at around 10:00.  Shortly after we passed through Knoxville, I-40 finally splits off to the south east toward Asheville.  After over 2000 miles we bid adieu to our highway companion and veered up to the northeast on I-81.  With the Appalachian Mountains to our right we wrapped up our final Tennessee miles and angled up into Virginia.

Yes, Santa Claus, there is a Virginia.

The Virginia landscape is lush and hilly.  Big swaths of forest interspersed with agriculture (including tobacco farms.)  The miles rolled on as we got nearer to our final destination, with only a couple of rest and coffee stops (for TJ) breaking up the time on the road.  When we estimated that we were about two hours from Fredericksburg I called HHJ and we arranged to meet her and T-Ray at the Visitor's Center in town.  Not long after we turned east on I-64 we came upon a scenic pull-off where we got a beautiful view of a valley.  Unfortunately, the fog from earlier in the day left a bit of haze that muted the view.

Signs at this scenic spot provided some additional history about the site:

We then continued on our way.  Instead of taking the larger I-64 to the southeast to I-95 in Richmond, we decided to cut out some distance by taking some smaller state highways to Fredericksburg.  So after Charlottesville we wound our way through some Virginian back roads.  Even with Mags on board we got a little lost, so the sequence of the exact roads we took are not clear to us now.  But we at least took VA highway 15 to Orange, 210 to Wilderness, and 3 into Fredericksburg.  

A rural Virginian road on the way to Fredericksburg

Fredericksburg was an important site in history during Revolutionary War times.  George Washington's mother and sister both lived there.  It was later the site of four major Civil War battles.  After one battle is was used by the Union as a medical station for over 20,000 wounded soldiers, who were treated over a period of a couple weeks by five doctors.

Today Fredericksburg has several streets with charming shops, restaurants, cafes, ice cream shops, and museums, and draws numerous tourists.  We parked the Taurus next to the Rappahannock River and walked a couple blocks to the Visitor's Center.

The Rappahannock River in Fredericksburg

HHJ and T-Ray met us at the Visitor's Center as promised and a happy, if muted, reunion took place.  We walked the streets a bit and heard music coming from the old town square, where a group playing old songs from the 19th century were performing.

We then went to the Fredericksburg Area Museum, which had exhibits that included artifacts and displays from both Revolutionary War times and the Civil War.  Since TJ and I had not had a lunch, we decided to have an early dinner and decided to try the Cafe New Orleans.  T-Ray got the fried calamari special, TJ and HHJ got the red bean and rice wrap, and I opted for the fried catfish po' boy sandwich with sweet potato fries.  All were excellent!  

Scenes from Fredericksburg

We were safe in case of nuclear attack

After dinner it was past 6:00, and if I wanted to see the new house in some form of daylight we needed to get going.  TJ and I returned to the Taurus and programmed Mags with the new address.  She took us through a winding rural two-lane road that connected with 301 about four miles shy of the Harry W. Nice Memorial Bridge, an impressive structure that spans the Potomac River into Maryland.  

The Harry W. Nice Memorial Bridge over the Potomac

The Potomac River

We traveled the final 12 miles of our journey and arrived at the new house just in time to see it in the last few minutes of daylight.  During my tour of the house I discovered that I was not the only new member of the family to our new home.  First, we found ants near the kitchen, undoubtedly driven in by all the rain they've been having the past couple weeks.  Second, this:

T-Ray holds Neko, an interloper adopted without my knowledge

I plan to take pictures of the house and add them to a post tomorrow.  After all, TJ is here until Tuesday, so there will be further adventures now that we are in Maryland.  

Our trusted chariot

It was quite a journey.  A trip that saw us put over 2,800 miles on the Taurus, drive through 10 states, and take 463 pictures.  Thank you for being a part of the journey.  But stay tuned, the journey isn't over yet.

Day #5: Memphis, TN to Bulls Gap, TN

At some point after leaving Oklahoma City yesterday we reached the halfway mark in our journey.  Memphis was an amazing day, full of history and exuberance.  How do we follow up something like a day spent in Memphis?  We decided to take an opposite approach.  If day #4 was all about Memphis, day #5 was all about scenery and an attempt to see a part of the south that we wouldn't have seen from the interstate.

The excitement started early when I became almost completely convinced that the man who came into the breakfast room in the hotel while TJ and I were chowing down on the free hot breakfast was none other than WKRP in Cincinnati alum Howard Hesseman.

Howard Hesseman

I came within a hair of asking him if he was, indeed, the former Dr. Johnny Fever, but my cowardice won out and I kept quiet.  Later, TJ got a look at him and immediately said, "Nah, that's not him."  For the sake of argument let's say that it was.
After hanging out with Howard, since Memphis is so close to the Mississippi border we decided that it wouldn't be too far out of the way to dip into Ol' Miss for a spell so we could add it to the list of states we've been to.  So we headed southeast out of Memphis and caught highway 72, which crosses the state line and then runs parallel with Mississippi's northern border just a few miles below Tennessee.

TJ and I never expected to see this sign in our lifetimes.

The weather today was absolutely gorgeous.  Clear blue skies.  Mild temperature.  No humidity.  We know we didn't get anywhere close to a representative look at Mississippi, but what we did see was beautifully scenic, and we could enjoy our surroundings on smooth, maintained roads.  

A view of Northern Mississippi

We know it's really hard for landscape photos to do the scenery justice, but believe us when we tell you that this is a very pretty part of the U.S.  For those of you following on the map, we caught Mississippi highway 15 off of 72 headed north and crossed back into Tennessee. 15 then became Tennessee highway 125.  On this road we passed through the idyllic little town of Bolivar:

Downtown Bolivar, Tennessee

We then caught state highway 18 and shortly thereafter turned right on state highway 100, which took us through part of the Chickasaw State Park.  We took 100 all the way to Decaturville, where we took highway 69 north to I-40.  

Tennessee State Highway 100

From one of our pit stops during our scenic diversion.

I was tempted to keep going on back roads for awhile longer, but along with the smaller roads came lower speeds and we still had to go through Nashville, Knoxville and beyond before stopping for the night.  I had hoped to at least stop at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville (original home of the Grand Old Opry) and the Country Music Hall of Fame.  It was beginning to look too optimistic to accomplish both, so I began to set my sights simply on the Ryman.  On the way we stopped at a very nice rest stop (apparently, all states except California and Oklahoma have very nice rest stops) which reminded us that we were traveling the "Music Highway," as I-40 is called between Memphis and Nashville.  As a result, this particular rest stop was called the Roy Acuff-George Jones Rest Area.  I'm sure this was the feather in the cap in the much celebrated careers of both men.

The next stop:  Nashville, Music City USA.

Nashville Skyline

The Ryman Auditorium is right smack dab in the middle of downtown Nashville.  Unlike Oklahoma City, which was not particularly crowded or difficult to navigate, Nashville is as bustling and busy a downtown as I have ever seen.  It even has some hills, so it seemed to me like a milder version of driving in San Francisco.  We found a parking garage close by and hoofed it a couple blocks to the Ryman.  It's hard to get pictures because the building is pretty big, and it is sandwiched between other big buildings on a narrow street.

The Ryman Auditorium

Plaque outside of the Ryman Auditorium

Elvis Costello brings his Spinning Songbook to the Ryman September 25th.

By this time we were hungry, so we walked down Broadway in search of a lunch.  We found the Big River Bar & Grille in hopes of getting something small to tide us over, since we still had hopes of finding good southern fried chicken for dinner.  After a tasty lunch (mine included cheesy grits) we realized we had spent much more time in Nashville than intended and we needed to get back on the road.  Mags the GPS lead us against both of our instincts safely and efficiently out of downtown and back onto I-40.

From Nashville the Taurus chewed up the miles.  Stops were few and brief as we tried to get to Knoxville by a reasonable hour.  But shortly before arriving in Knoxville we crossed over into the Eastern time zone and lost an hour.  We knew we would not make it to our planned on destination of Johnson City, so we looked for alternatives.  We settled on a little town called Bulls Gap, in which Mags helped us find a Best Western.  We had a new target destination only about 35 miles shy of where we had planned to stay.

We had another celebrity sighting as well.  Out of nowhere Dolly Parton appeared:

Dolly Parton on I-40

Just a little ways outside of Knoxville we finally bid adieu to I-40, which splits off to the southeast headed toward Asheville.  We headed toward the northeast on I-81.  The Best Western Executive Suites in Bulls Gap is arguably the nicest of all the BWs we've stayed in on this trip.  I was greeted by Kimberly, who in her delightful Tennessee accent rotated through her repertoire of pet names while talking to me:  sweetie, hon, baby, etc.  She also regaled me at length about the fabulous hot breakfast that would be waiting for us in the morning:  scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, biscuits, gravy, pancakes, honey buns with butter, cereal, muffins.  The Works.  She also recommended a place down the road for dinner that makes great catfish called Sandy's Diner.  We tried to make it, but by the time we got there they had just closed.  So the bad dinner karma that has followed us throughout the trip struck yet again, and forced us to settle for Taco Bell and Dairy Queen, still in search of the elusive southern fried chicken.

Tomorrow is our last day on the road.  We will soon cross over into Virginia, and will be watching and listening carefully for any road closures due to flooding that might cause problems for us.  We may be meeting HHJ and T-Ray in Fredericksburg before I get to pull into the driveway of our new home for the first time.  In the meantime, we will be on the hunt for Tennessee and Virginia shot glasses for TJ's collection.  (We struck out in Mississippi.)  So come back tomorrow for the 6th and final day of the trip.  Until then, with the Dodgers and Giants currently tied 1-1, I bid you good night.