Michael Williams Family (9/19/2015)

Today's agenda was spending most of the day with Michael Williams and meeting his family.  He had invited us up for breakfast.  They live about 30 miles from Marilyn, so we got an early start and headed to his home in Amherst.  He has a lovely home on 11 acres, and he and a buddy were sawing up a big oak tree in the back yard when we arrived.  I think his wife Nicole got the chore of fixing breakfast since he was working outside, but it was delicious, and we got to get a tour of his home and meet the family.

Michael's Marine Corp career wall

Next up was his son Gavin's football game.  Gavin is in 6th grade and plays both offense and defense.

Gavin suited up, number 81

Leilana (plain gray t-shirt), Lauren (gray tank top)

We got behind 18-0 in the first half but came back and won the game.  It was their first game of the season (their first "scheduled" game was a forfeit by the other team so they hadn't play yet this season).

 Our final event of the day was a birthday party for Chris (rumor has it that he turned 43 today, but I think it's a secret).  Chris brought steaks and chicken to grill, and Marilyn fixed lots of goodies to go with the meat.  And Jenny baked a delicious carrot cake from scratch, which was awesome.  So when all the kids got there, it was something of a madhouse, but the food and companionship was great.  It was fun to get to be a part of the evening and to enjoy their family.

A fun evening and great food.  The little girls kept us entertained. Another busy day at the Stuckeys.

D-Day, Stuckeys (9/18/2015)

Marilyn kept us busy today.  On our way to the D-Day Memorial at the neighboring town of Bedford, we stopped by their son, Chris's, State Farm office and met him, then drove by his house (his wife Jenny wasn't home).

Our next stop was the D-Day Memorial.  It is located here in Bedford, Virginia--"the community suffering the highest per capita D-Day losses in the nation.  The National D-Day Memorial honors all Allied forces that participated in the invasion of Normandy on 6 June 1944 during WWII. . .   On the morning of 6 June 1944 were 44 soldiers, sailors, and airmen from the town and county of Bedford, Virginia."  A total of 20 of these men lost their life that day.

 

This next monument is "Homage" "a symbolic piece, emblematic of those communities across the country that nurtured those who went away to war and grieved for those who never returned."

 There was also a plaque depicting the location of the beaches we landed at that day, and other plaques recognizing select regiments.  (Uncle) Marlin Butler was part of the D-Day invasion.  He was one of the paratroopers with the 101st Airborne Division so that one had special meaning to us.

There were statues of all of the commanders, including Eisenhower.  The main part of the exhibit was of soldiers wading through the water to the beach, and spouts of water, with noise, would intermittently shoot off, depicting machine gun fire.  This was a really nice memorial.  There was also a depiction of soldiers climbing over the cliffs at Normandy.

Our tour lasted just over an hour, and our tour guide was excellent, he really made this historical event come alive.  We left here and had lunch at an old train station in Bedford -- nice place and great lunch.

On the way home, we drove past Jimmy and Sarah's house, but no one was home.

Next we got a tour of the "townhouse" where Aunt Nellie stays when during the summer when she comes to Virginia.  A really comfortable house, very nice.

We stopped back by Chris and Jenny's and this time the family was home, so we got to meet Jenny and the kids.  Then we headed back to the house and started working on the Family Tree again.  Marilyn had been up until 1:00 a.m. last night, organizing her notes (I had given her that homework assignment), so we spent a couple hours getting that information into the Tree.  Ken was home when we got home, so he and Joe spent some time on the patio, then walked out to the garden. We had been watching two deer playing out there, then  Ken discovered this varmint (we decided it was a woodchuck or groundhog) up in a tree.

About 8:30, we all went out for Mexican food to a place they like, but it was really noisy, food was good though.  By the time we got home, it was close to 10:00 p.m. -- a long day.  But we saw a lot, so it was a good day.

Day 1 at Stuckeys (9/17/2015)

Marilyn and Julie had an appointment this morning, and Ken is doing some contract work for the company he retired from, so Joe and I had a free morning.  We had made contact last night with Michael Williams, who lives in the area, and he called us back to make arrangements to get together on Saturday, and he invited us to stop by his work today and get a tour of the shop  -- T.R.U. Ball Archery -- they make, among other things, sights and triggers for the bow and arrow industry.  We hadn't seen Michael for 10 years, so it was really great to get to visit with him and see what he's doing since he retired from the Marine Corp.  And he looks amazingly like his Dad, so that was sort of special.

Fiber Optics

Assembly Parts for Releases for Bows

Part of a Bow Sight

Optic Sight

Michael is funny.  When he was telling us about hunting, we asked if his kids hunt too.  He said, yes, he was "breeding killers."  All three of his kids have gotten their own deer, I know his youngest, Gavin, has at least one turkey.  His other funny story was about interviewing for this job.  They had advertised an opening for an assembly line worker (I think), and when he began the interview, his interviewer told him they had a better job in mind for him.  They were wanting to replace the floor supervisor (I don't think I got that title right) because the one they had wasn't tough enough, wanted to be everybody's friend, and as a result, their quality and productivity was suffering.  Michael listened for a while, then said, "so you want me to bust some skulls."  The interviewer sort of hesitated, but then said yes.  Later, after they hired him, the son of the interviewer (boss) said, "he knows he can't put his hands on anyone, right."  So I think Michael got their attention.

He gave us a tour of his facility, introduced us as his "second mom and dad" to his co-workers, and he even gave us company hats and t-shirts.  We get to meet his family on Saturday.

 Next on our agenda was the Verizon store, and I finally got a new phone to replace the one that we ran over in the car.  Joe has been researching phones for weeks now, so we finally made the decision -- a new LG G4.  I'm sure it will do much more than I am capable of understanding, but we were able to salvage my contacts from my old phone by going through my Google account.  I guess they were "in the cloud."  But I lost my Notes (I had a lot of them from this trip) and my Pictures, which I had downloaded a couple months ago, but lost the picture of my big fish!  Fortunately, I have some on the camera, but I kinda liked bringing up that fish from time to time, and showing it to Joe.

By the time we got back to Marilyn's house, it was really too late to begin a sightseeing tour, so Marilyn and I spent the next 3-4 hours working on the Butler Family Tree.  She was the one who originally put the Tree together, on the typewriter, in 1968, and I'm unclear how it ever became my baby, but she has been collecting information as she visits Family, so she had a lot of notes that we added to the master list.  She still has a tote to go through before we are really finished, but it was fun working on it together.

We finished the evening by going out for pizza.  And a night tour of downtown Lynchburg. 
 

We hope to do a little sightseeing on Friday, and maybe finish our work on the Family Tree if Marilyn did her homework last night (going through that tote).  The weather here has been perfect, 60s at night, 80s during the day. 

On to Virginia (9/15-16/2015)

Today is a travel day, but we didn't feel like we had to get an early start, so I gathered the laundry and went over to get that taken care of first thing.  I got my 3 loads started, then walked back to the RV to take a shower and discovered more dirty clothes that I hadn't seen in the dark, so when I went over to put the clothes in the dryer, I started another load in the washer -- that delayed the process a bit, but at least I got everything washed and dried. We got on the road just about 10:50, and headed around the East side of D.C. on 495/95.  Traffic wasn't too bad and we crossed the Potomac about 11:30 or so, and then we were in Virginia.

We stayed with I-95 as it turned south and eventually stopped at a Visitor's Center just before Fredericksburg.  Along this route we passed the turn-off to Quantico, the FBI training center which is mentioned in a lot of the books we read.  But we didn't go there.

At the Visitor Center, Joe remembered that we wanted to drive the Blue Ridge Parkway, so we got information and maps, and cut over on Hwy 3 and then Hwy 20 and then Hwy 250 to get on the Blue Ridge at Charlottesville, which is Mile 0.  We completely missed the Skyline Drive due to our circuitous route around DC.  It was 3:10 by the time we got on this Parkway so we didn't drive it too much today.

We found a campground just 2 miles off the Parkway, unfortunately, it was a zigzag road right off the mountain, but we made it ok.  This was Mile Post 27.  We got off the road about 4:00 and spent the night at the Montebello Camping & Fishing Resort, a quiet, very woodsy campground.  Joe wanted to get off the road early so he could wash the windows since we were carrying bug splatters from 5 states and we hoped to spot some wildlife on this Parkway.  So he did that while I fixed dinner, and we had a quiet, early evening.  We drove 189 miles today, lovely weather.

The next morning I let him sleep in so we didn't get started until 10:45.  We are still a little weary from our marathon days in Boston, New York City, and Washington, so I thought a little extra rest was in order.  It was 52 degrees, so a bit nippy.  We drove separately back up our two miles, then hooked up the car just before we got back on the Parkway.  We encountered a tunnel not too far down the road, but fortunately it was adequately tall and wide.

And we pulled off at a few overlooks, but not many.  This one was a very pretty little lake, with reflections of the trees, and we saw a school of bluegill fish swimming right under the pier.  We thought about getting out the fishing poles.

 We crossed the James River up here, almost on top of the Ridge, imagine that! 

 The views are lovely from this ridge, you can see for miles and miles at the overlooks.

 We exited the Parkway at Milepost 106, taking U.S. 460 and 221 over to Joe's cousin, Marilyn and Ken Stuckey at Forest, Virginia.  We fueled in Forest for $1.819 --the cheapest gas we've found on this trip.  Joe says it probably the least we've paid in 10 years.  Anyway, we filled up the tank for under $100, a real rarity, and we had 320 miles on that tank, so it was getting low (51 gallons it took).   We checked in with Marilyn and verified our GPS directions, and found her house shortly thereafter.  We got there about 2:30, got ourselves situated in their driveway and hooked up to the electric plug ins they use for Christmas decorations.   After we visited for a couple hours, Marilyn fed us an excellent dinner (she drafted Joe into grilling the chicken), and Ken finally got home from work just as we started to eat, so we had a nice visit with both of them and with Julie.  We didn't see any wildlife on the Parkway (except a chipmunk and a couple of squirrels), but as we sat at the dinner table at Marilyn's, we watched a doe and 2 fawns play around in their backyard.  Joe had seen one deer earlier while he was sitting on the back patio, just before he got drafted into grilling the chicken. 

It was another nice day, we drove 120 miles but they were slow miles.  The speed limit on the Parkway is 45, and a lot of the time we are under that, as we go around the curves and up and down the hills.  Nice scenery, though.

We will spend a few days here -- Marilyn has a bit of sightseeing lined up for us and we will probably go to the Verizon store again and discuss phones.  We are looking forward to a few days of rest, so we hope Marilyn doesn't run us too hard.  All these miles are beginning to catch up with us.