Archive for exploring

exploring

Weekend Retreat

I had a bit of a getaway last weekend, as my church and choir had a retreat up in the mountains. I made a day of the trip up there and stopped at the Virginia Museum of the Civil War, which is at the New Market battlefield. The museum is a bit weird. It’s run by the Virginia Military Institute, as VMI cadets played a role in the battle and a number died there, and it’s all very Lost Cause, with the focus on glory and valor, etc., and no mention of what they were actually fighting about. There was a film that showed what led up to the battle, the battle itself, and the aftermath, and the one section that acknowledged slavery was a thing seemed to have been edited. In the part showing how the people nearby were preparing for the battle that was going to take place around them, it showed the locals hiding valuables and taking shelter in basements, but then it showed an enslaved woman seeing the Union soldiers approaching, smiling and running, then it showed a really racist cartoon of a man reading the Emancipation Proclamation and a picture of Abraham Lincoln, but with no narration saying anything about these things (the rest of the film had narration explaining everything).

They preserved the farm where the battle took place, and I walked around the farm buildings and house, which were interesting in their own right. The battlefield was just a field, though it did give some sense of the scale. There was a walking trail going around all the key points in the battle, but it was pretty hot so I went back inside to look at the museum. Inside the museum, the exhibits mentioning anything to do with slavery or Black people were “under construction” with the explanatory plaques or photos missing (and those were the only ones that were being reworked, so it felt pretty deliberate). I left the museum angry and didn’t want to show up feeling that way at the retreat, so I stopped at a local potato chip factory I remembered being nearby. I missed getting to see the chips being made because they’d already stopped for the day, but they loaded me up with samples of all their flavors to try. I ended up buying some of the seasonal flavor they were only selling at the factory and a couple of other bags to bring to the retreat (and then there were so many snacks I never got them out, so now I have the Strategic Potato Chip Reserve).

The word "Love" is spelled out using cannon barrels, a wagon wheel, a V made out of battle flags, and an E made out of fence boards.
The fact that they used gun barrels to make the Virginia “Love” sign should have been a clue about what I’d find inside the museum.

As for the retreat, it was held in a place that used to be a Victorian spa resort. The main building was an old hotel that looked like something out of Somewhere in Time. My room was in another old hotel that was built in 1855. When I was out on the balconies with the rocking chairs and Adirondack chairs, I felt like I should be wearing a white dress and carrying a parasol. Inside was rather more spartan, since it is a religious retreat center. I spent most of the weekend doing choir rehearsals, but I did get to hike up the mountain (it’s the Appalachians, so it was just walking up a trail, not actual mountain climbing), and I got a short hike in the woods. We had campfires both nights. One night, the kids got really excited about toasting marshmallows and making s’mores, so the adults had s’mores chefs serving us. There were huge meals in the dining hall and I met a lot of interesting people, as well as getting to know the people I already knew better.

A Victorian hotel of white wood with green trim, and another larger one behind it. In the foreground is a small lake with the first building reflected in it.
The building in front was where my room was, and I got to spend a little time sitting on one of those balconies with a book.

I took the back roads home, so I got to do some fun mountain driving and saw some spectacular scenery, though there were some nervous moments because the road wasn’t labeled and I thought I’d made a wrong turn, and I was in an area with no cell signal, so my map barely worked (fortunately, I’d brought up the map while I had access to wifi in the main building, so I did have a map. I just didn’t have directions). I knew from my car’s compass that I was heading in the right direction, and I made it to the road I knew. When I got home and checked the map, I found that I’d been on the road I wanted to be on. The fall colors are starting to come out, so it looked like fall even though it was warm in the afternoons.

Trees in the foreground frame a view, with a distant ridge of blue mountains, and a closer ridge with the covering of trees visible.
Mountains! The view was worth the climb.

I shouldn’t have been too tired, since I went to bed at my usual time, but I was exhausted when I got home. I imagine it’s introvert drain. I’ve been very antisocial this whole week, which is helping.

I’m currently editing the fourth Rydding Village book, the pass when I read it out loud and make sure the words work. But when this book is done, I’ll be spending October doing a lot more driving around and looking at scenery.

exploring

Off Again

It’s another adventure day. It’s supposed to be nearing peak color on the Blue Ridge Parkway and I want to miss the Saturday crowds, so I’m off to explore. I may find apple cider donuts, and I’m going to try to get some apples for making apple butter.

This morning, I went to a meeting at the local Shakespeare theater, which is the only reproduction of the Blackfriars Theatre, where Shakespeare’s company performed once he had sponsorship by the king. The Globe is more famous, but Blackfrairs was the fancy one, and for some reason they rebuilt it in this smallish town, so we have the American Shakespeare Center here. I met some interesting people and even exchanged contact info and got invited to some other events.

It was exactly this time last year when I first visited here to decide if I wanted to move, and I can’t believe I live here now. I think it really was a good move for me. I would like to meet more people, but that will take time. In the meantime, there’s so much to do and see.

Now I’m going to pack a picnic lunch and head off into the mountains.

Life, exploring

The Adventures Continue

Last weekend’s exploring adventure involved a bit of history, some socializing, and the continuing quest for apple cider donuts.

I started by going to the heritage day at the Mennonite Heritage Farm. That’s part of Eastern Mennonite University about 40 minutes north of me, and it’s a preserved/restored/rebuilt farm/settlement. For this event, they were demonstrating some aspects of farm life from the past. I took the back roads up there and saw some amazing scenery, as well as driving through some of the towns that get mentioned on the TV newscasts, so I managed to orient myself better around the area along the way.

When I got there, I was just in time for a shape singing lesson. I’ve sung a lot of pieces that had their origins in shape singing, but I hadn’t seen the actual shapes in use. I’ll have to research more to see how that works because I’m not sure of the point. The old hymn books we were using used both the shapes and a regular staff, so I never looked at the shapes. I just looked at where the shapes were on the staff. It’s possible that this publication was a hybrid and the true shape singing didn’t use a staff. Anyway, it was fun getting to sit in an old one-room schoolhouse/church to do this kind of singing.

They had some farm animals, as well as activities mostly for kids to do, like a two-person saw, a cider press, and tin punching. They also had some blacksmith demonstrations and they were making molasses and making popcorn in a big kettle. Then the buildings on the property (old farmhouses) had some craft displays, like showing the transition from raw flax to linen fabric.

Demonstration day at a historic farm. In the foreground, a man makes popcorn in a big, black kettle over an open fire. To the right is a big, red-brick farmhouse. In the background is a white dining pavilion tent. The sky is a bright, clear, blue.
A day at the farm.

They had a lunch on the grounds, with soup, homemade bread, homemade butter, and homemade apple butter, plus pies. They had long tables under a tent pavilion, with open seating. I ended up chatting with the people I was sitting near, swapping suggestions about places to visit in the area (they’ve been around here for a while, but I’ve gone to places they haven’t). And it turned out that they’re friends with my neighbor a couple of doors down, the one I met at the town visitors center when I first got here. I got to try some shoo-fly pie, which I’ve read about but have never had. Then I got to take a buggy ride. They had an Amish/Old Order Mennonite buggy and were giving rides. I walked up to take pictures and they said they had room for one person, but everyone waiting was a group, so I went for it. I got to sit next to the driver and chatted with him.

A white, wooden schoolhouse with a woman in an old-fashioned dress standing in front. In the foreground is an Amish-type black buggy pulled by a dark brown horse. There's a row of green trees behind the school, and the sky is bright blue.
Roger the horse took me on a buggy ride. In the background is the old schoolhouse where they taught shape singing.

After that, I headed up into the mountain foothills toward an apple orchard that supposedly sells cider donuts, along with cider, and there’s a brewery for hard cider, with a tasting room with fabulous views. Well, it turns out that everyone else thought it would be a great day to pick and buy apples and have cider, plus they were having a wedding there. I could smell the donuts. I saw people eating them, but I never found where you bought them. There were some really long lines around the place, so one of them may have been that line. It was too crowded for me, so I bailed. At least it was a really pretty drive.

On the way home, I stopped at a heritage market that I’ve seen advertised on TV. They advertised baked goods, produce, and other stuff, so I thought maybe they’d have donuts (and probably a restroom). It turned out to be more of a mall, and they had a really good kitchenware shop where I found a pastry cloth and rolling pin cover that I’ve been looking for and unable to find. No donuts, alas, though. When I get a permanent house and am ready to decorate, this place would be good to go back to because they had a lot of handcrafted items, plus that kitchenware shop (so many gadgets!).

I have leads on a couple of other possible orchards that advertise cider donuts, and I think I’ll go on Friday this week, when it may not be as crowded. On the weekend, there’s an event at the Frontier Culture museum, plus there’s a festival at the park near me, which means it would be a good time to walk or drive around the neighborhoods I’m targeting for buying a house to see how far I can hear the music from the festival. It’s not too bad where I am, though there are times when it’s less pleasant to sit on my porch, so I want to see where the music is louder.

It was around this time last year that I came here to visit and see if I wanted to move here. I really did pick the best time to visit because autumn here is absolutely glorious.

A hillside covered with red and gold trees.
Fall colors at the park near my house.
Life, exploring

Over the Mountain

Last Friday’s adventure involved a lot of driving in the mountains. I need to get a topographical map because the road map doesn’t tell the full story or adequately prepare me for the road I’ll be driving on. I think the map might even straighten the roads a bit instead of showing every twist and turn. I’ve learned that if an otherwise straight road on the map has a section that suddenly shows a lot of zigzags, that’s a sign that the road is going through mountains, and those zigzags are switchbacks and hairpin turns. I’ve been reading about going through mountain passes all my life but it turns out my impression of what that meant has been inaccurate. I’ve pictured a cleft between mountains, a simple up and over in a relatively low spot. But that turns out to be an inaccurate impression because that relatively low spot is still up pretty high, so you have to climb to get to it, and that often means going along the side of a mountain with a lot of switchbacks.

So, I set out heading west on what amounts to the major east-west road around here. I don’t know how old this road is, but there’s a coaching inn on it that dates to 1812. That’s before you get to the mountains, but there’s nothing much past it until you get through the mountains, and the town past the mountains was pretty old, so I think the road through the mountains may be that old. It was definitely built before they did things like dynamite mountains to put roads through. It was actually kind of a fun drive, if sometimes a bit harrowing. I was very glad I was driving my Subaru, which has all-wheel drive and is built for that sort of thing. While twists and turns were kind of fun with the stick shift in my old car, this might have been a bit much for that car to handle.

At the top of a mountain, there was a scenic overlook at a Civil War battlefield, where the Confederate army dug in to defend the pass (which suggests the road through the mountains may date back at least that far). They’ve preserved one of the trenches, but you can also see where there are terraces dug into the side of the mountain. There’s a short hiking trail with signs along the way containing excerpts from letters sent by a soldier who was there, talking about his experiences. On a sunny autumn day, it was chilly up there, so I can’t imagine spending part of a winter there (they got snow around there early this morning). It did make for a glorious vantage point for viewing the valley and more mountains beyond it. The mountains here are in waves of ranges with valleys of varying size in between, so it’s a bit of harrowing mountain driving, then flat valley, then more mountains, then flat driving, etc.

Rows of gentle mountains, covered in a patchwork of green, gold, and red trees. There are pine trees in the foreground and there's a bright blue sky above.
Rows and rows of mountains, with a little valley between each row and some interesting driving along the way. This is looking west, so probably West Virginia in the distance.

After a couple more harrowing mountain passes, I reached a valley with a little town that’s close to the West Virginia border (if I’d known how close it was, I might have driven on a bit just to add another state to my list). They were having their fall festival. I walked around a bit and got some tourist information. This area is a big producer of maple syrup, and they have a syrup festival in the early spring that I’ll have to go to. In this area, the trees were all red and gold, and it was beautiful, but I didn’t manage to get a good photo because the angle of the sun was wrong.

Elements of the festival were scattered around the area, and I headed off the main road to get to where they were supposed to be doing more stuff, but that road turned out to be a tiny byway that really twisted around the mountains. The place I was heading seemed to appear out of nowhere around a bend, right at a time when I had two trucks behind me, so I couldn’t stop abruptly or turn back. It’s a place that’s part of the syrup festival, so now I know what to look for when I go back. I ended up making a loop and going what the locals call “over the mountain” at a different pass, one my friend calls “the one that’s not scary,” and now I know what she means. It’s a bit more straightforward up and over drive.

A view from a mountain pass, with lower mountains and the start of fall color in front and the blue ridge of the Blue Ridge Mountains in back, with a bright blue sky overhead.
Looking east from the “not scary” pass, the leaves are just starting to turn, and you can see how the Blue Ridge Mountains got their name. That’s the blue ridge in the background.

In all, I saw some beautiful fall color and found several places I’ve read about that now I know how to get back to for more in-depth exploration. A lot of the driving was through forests, in places where the trees arch over the road and form a tunnel. That’s one of my favorite things, to drive or walk through a tunnel of trees. I opened my sunroof so I could see the trees over my head.

This weekend’s adventure is going to involve an open house day at the Mennonite Heritage Farm. I hope to learn some stuff I can use in my books. I may also visit an apple orchard that’s nearby as I continue my quest for apple cider donuts.