Cutting a Swath Through Virginia

We headed out on a road trip this weekend, off to Virginia to go to Kim's Granddaughter's birthday party. Maia turned four on Saturday, and was delighted to see her "Mimi" (or "Meme" however you spell it) there to enjoy it with her. Maia got smothered with presents as well, and we endured a lengthy stay at Chuck E Cheese's.

Afterwards, we headed out on a road trip - rather spontaneously, and I talked Kim into going off to see Appomattox Court House, the site where Robert E Lee surrendered to U.S. Grant, which also happened to be very close to the town of Bedford, where Kim worked in missions, starting anew church, at the foot of the Blue Ridge mountains which she loves.

So we headed out across the state, grabbing a quick bit of chicken, for me, and deep fried chicken gizzards for Kim.

You laugh, and say "how cute, they call chicken nuggets 'gizzards' down there," but I'm telling you this is the South. They don't fool around with this stuff. I tried one. Purple, chewy things that taste like, well, parts unknown. Gizzards isn't a picturesque name, it's the real deal.

So off we go again, me driving and eyeing the wilderness, and Kim eating her gizzards, singing

"This is the queen of my double wide trailer,
With the polyester curtains and the redwood deck."

We cheerfully explored and stopped along the way, taking pictures of different Civil War wayside points, and old barns. Now, I've learned that I can lure Kim into going to Civil War sites with the promise of old barns in the area that she can photograph.

However...

Hard to believe, but there are actually more old barns in Virginia than there are Civil war sites.

So time starts running out, and the sun is setting as we come up on Appomattox Court House. We sprint from point to point - well I do anyway. Kim is not particularly excited by things like Lee's headquarters, or where Longstreet built fortifications etc. She stirs into interest only when we see an old barn or building on the battlefield.

This is where Robert E Lee was mobbed by his men after the surrender, where they begged him to lead them once more against the Yankees. You can see the lower ground where the road ran in those days. Would have made a good "Bloody Lane," but it wasn't to be.

This is a graveyard holding 19 of the last hundred or so men to die in the conflict between these two armies, in a battle on the last morning, a few hours before the surrender. (Kim took the pic)

This is the grave of J. H. Hutchins, who enlisted in the Confederate army three days after the bombardment of Fort Sumter, and died in the final hours before the surrender, making it all the way through the entire war only to die in the last moments.

On the plus side, he never surrendered.

We got to Appomattox Court House, but the final road to the visitor center and the McLean house where the surrender actually took place, was closed. We missed it by an hour.

We weren't too upset, well I wasn't - and Kim handled it well, so we poked around other places, such as the location of Grant's headquarters, and watched deer coming out into the evening air.

We had a little trouble finding a room, and ended up in this place with a leaking roof, a wet floor, and some general untidiness.

I wasn't happy with it, and figured we should have been given a discount, but since the guy said it was his last room, and I was dead tired, I'd suffer through.

Kim wanted to talk to the manager about it. I told her to go ahead, just asking that she not get us thrown out of the motel, and she placed a call.

Fifteen minutes later we were in the car again, off to find another motel.

Wow.

Touring with Kim is like touring with The Who - I'd never been thrown out of a motel before. (Note to family members - do not tangle with Kim)

The next morning we dropped by to see the church Kim had helped start years before, and then off to the mountains. The congregation has outgrown the church, and has put it up for sale, according to a sign in the other window.

The "Peaks of Otter," and the rough area from which the Union General David Hunter led a raid of 15,000 soldiers into the area to burn, loot and destroy - last week, apparently, by the size of the grudge still held by people there.

Another one of Kim's loves.

Up along the Blue Ridge, on of the gorgeous mountain tops.

A barn that Kim couldn't resist getting out and photographing.

And of course the Walton's Mountain Country Store. The guy who wrote "The Walton's" lived near here in his boyhood, and shopped at this location. This store dates from the early eighties, but this is where the original store was, and this is the area where the 1930s depression stories were sited. It's the local village store of the real John Boy Walton, if not the TV version.

We headed at last for home, cutting briefly through Manassas on the way there, to make a neat little finish to the tour - Civil War devotees are aware that the war is often said to have started in Wilmer McLean's backyard, and ended in his parlor.

He lived on land involved in the first land battle of the War, at Manassas, and decided to move his family to a safer, quieter location, which was Appomattox Court House, a village of a few dozen buildings. There, he thought, the war could not find him.

He almost got it right.

With a spectacular sunset lighting up the sky behind us, and deer venturing out onto the battlefield, we headed for home, and the end of a rather lovely adventure of our own.

Posted by Indiana Reb on: Tuesday 18th October 2005, 11:58 AM