I'm Back

We just had a wonderful trip to the Shenandoah Valley, Virginia to our Grandson's wedding. We took 5 days driving there through Missouri (ST. Louis Zoo), Illinois, Indiana (Evansville Zoo), Kentucky (I-64 east of Louisville to Frankfort) where we toured & sample Buffalo Trace Bourbon Distillery). Called that because the huge herd of buffalo came through there and stamped down a wide "trail" (the Indian word is "Trace"). Later the trail was used to travel west. West Virginia (tour and sample a wonderful little Mom & Pop Winery(Watt's Roost Vineyard) that is so small they do everything by hand. He spent 20 yrs. in the Military, came home and started his own electrical shop which he's now turned over to his son. Bought 30 acres beside the farm he grew up in a beautiful valley. Farms around him were raising beef cattle & dairying but what do you do with 30 acres? Doing some research & having a good friend with a winery he found out y0u can raise 1,000 grape plants on 1 acre of ground and get 1 gallon of wine from each plant. You do the math. It's still work & you can never tell if a batch is going to be good. Beautiful Greenbrier Award winning Resort nested on 6,500 acres in the Alleghany Mountains & the wonderful shops & eating places inside got SOME of my money. The Biltmore (America's largest home) built by George Vanderbilt at Asheville, North Carolina got the rest . After the most wonderful Southern Wedding I've ever attended we headed north to Washington, D.C. to see the Mall with the memorials to the WW ll & Vietnam wonderful young men & women that gave their lives to the cause. My 1st cousin was killed in WWll & a young man from my home town was killed in the Vietnam war. We were able to look up both their names. We saw the Smithsonian's National Zoo (of course). Now to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. For you that don't know, it is a skinny little island with Highway 12 running down the middle of it for about 30 miles with some places only a long bridge width between it and the mainland. We were there in 1956 at Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina and what a change since then. Both sides of the Highway is huge homes & condo's for the people up north to come in the summer. Lots & lots of shops!!! BARGAINS!!! Good time to go. They are selling last years stuff dirt cheap to make room for the new stuff this year. With about the same visitors each summer they have to change their merchandise. Driving home across the southern end of North Carolina & Tennesse was nice but I'll take the hills of Kentucky with a little Mom & Pop shop around every corner that has neat stuff in it like old whiskey barrells full of little bags of Sassafrass, Green Apple, etc. etc. hard candies, homemade fudge flavors you don't see anywhere else. Springfield, MO is the home of the real life Laura Ingalls (that wrote all those books after she was 65 yrs. old). It was where her and Alfonzo raised their daughter who followed in her mother's footsteps and became a famous writer, also. All & all we were gone for 17 days delightful days. I want to go east on I-64 again before I die.