The Rest of the way to MA(07-26-18)

To be honest, this part of our trip is a bit of a blur…..I had to pull up my pictures and my credit card receipts to even remember where we were and what we did.  Mostly its because once we got to MA, we were socializing nonstop.

But first, we had to get there:


After our mini vacation we went back to work in VA, spending more than two days buried in archive records at the Library of Virginia in Richmond. We didn’t find anything interesting, but we will probably come back after we go to Nova Scotia, if we have any better leads.

Paul traces his family back to early Jamestown VA, and although we’ve been there before, we decided to take another look with that knowledge fresh in our heads. I wasn’t particularly thrilled when he decided he wanted to take the archeological tour,  but I agreed to go.

  Our guide introduced himself and let us know that years ago, the archeological tour was a mere 20 minutes long but that there was so much new and exciting information, that it now lasts more than an hour and a half.  I think I groaned out loud. He did assure us that there were no hard feelings if we wandered off before the end.









He started by explaining that by 1992, no archeological digging had been done here in many years, and none was planned.  They had long ago given up the hope of ever finding the original fort. In 1993 the park needed a new administrator, and hired Dr. William Kelso, an archeological historian.


For the next two hours he walked us around the site, while hilariously telling the story of Dr. Kelso’s impact on the park.









Dr. Kelso had some ideas on where the original fort could be and thru his persistence, convinced the VA historical society to let him dig where he thought it might be.  He was given ONE chance to find it,-with no budget, no staff, and no equipment. The first place he thought the fort was, he found nothing.







After months of pestering, they let him dig in a different area.  Still nothing. Over the course of a few years, he was allowed to dig in small areas, looking for the fort. He found a little more evidence each time as to where it could be- and finally- he found conclusive evidence- and the fort was found.  Jamestown is now one of the most prolific archeological sites in the world.

The two hours passed by incredibly fast, I was never bored, and I learned a lot.

On a serious side, he talked about the Starving Time. While trying to settle the area, the pioneers became surrounded by hostile native Americans and had to hastily build a fort.  They could not venture out to search for food, and of the more than 400 people there at the time, fewer than 70 survived.  Eventually they decided they had to leave, and go back to England.  They packed up the ships and left but before they even got out of the harbor, they ran into a fleet of supply ships, and made their way back to Jamestown.

After leaving Virginia, we stopped for one night in Maryland, making our way north pretty quickly.













 
Cunningham Falls State Park can’t handle big rigs, but was perfect for the truck camper. Quite a few times we have stayed in places that would have been a challenge, or impossible, with the trailer.











We enjoy waterfalls, so before we left, we hiked the 1.4 mile hike to the waterfall and back. It wasn’t much to write home about, but it got us out and moving for a bit.














For the most part, we have stayed off the interstates, which means it takes longer to reach our destination, but we see more interesting things along the way.
















Sometimes we’ll find an awesome pullout where we can stop and have lunch.

I will say that although the driver prefers the smaller roads, the navigator has a more challenging time, having to pay attention to potential low bridges and such.

Pennsylvania was also a “one night stop” along the way.  We did really enjoy the fireflies that night- there were tons of them.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

                                                                

And soon enough we were in Massachusetts.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

South Carolina, AKA, Vacationland (07-08-18)

There is no research we need to do in South Carolina at the moment, so we are “on vacation”. It’s the week before July 4th  and we have no reservations made.  It’s getting close enough that it was stressing me out, not having a “spot”, so we sat down with the calendar, and a map. 

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We had decided that we’d love to go to the beach for a few days, and figured that Myrtle Beach would be fun,  but what are the odds we’d find a spot?  Armed with a list of Campgrounds, we call the first one, the one that looked the best, and were shocked to hear that they did indeed have an opening (helps to be in a truck camper!).

With that reservation taken care of, we started looking for places to stop along the way.

Facebook makes it somewhat easier to connect with people, and my cousin, who I haven’t spent time with in about 40 years, saw where we were headed, and reached out. We had a great dinner with her and her husband Jimmy at their home in South Carolina.

  

It isn’t often that we get a chance to visit a National Park that we’ve never been to before but Congaree National Park is in South Carolina.

Congaree is an old growth floodplain forest, one of the few left in this country.  As you would think, when it rains, this area, which is bordered by bluffs on both sides, fills with water.

The trees that grow here are capable of surviving in standing water. The Bald Cypress trees surround themselves with a root system called knees.  No one is really sure what their purpose is but perhaps they work as a snorkel.

There is one other creature that flourishes in the floodplain forest:

July 2 we arrived at Myrtle Beach. We’ve been here before but we have never stayed here. Our campground has just about everything you could want, and we made good use of it all over the July 4th holiday.

Their pool even boasts a Lazy River.  We didn’t spend much time in the pool, but we did check out the Lazy River during the “adults only” hour.





The ocean is what I was excited about- the weather was gorgeous and the water temperature was in the 80s! We could walk to it from our site- priceless!

I spent a lot of time in the water, and it was so warm that even Paul came in pretty often…

We realized the first day that we were ill equipped for a stay at the beach, so we hit up the stores and now own two beach 

chairs and an umbrella.

With numerous pool parties, dances and assorted contests, there was plenty to do over the holiday. There was even a parade, right outside our door.

We knew we were in the right spot when people started pulling their chairs up all along our street.

Once the parades, barbequing and dancing was done, we took our chairs and walked to the beach where we could watch all the fireworks that were being set off by the hotels along the waterfront.

We are really spoiled as far as fireworks go, so we just enjoyed the fact that we were watching from a beach, didn’t have to drive, and were wearing shorts and a t-shirts.

Georgia on my Mind (07-01-18)

The Georgia Archives are located just south of Atlanta.










We had lots of research to do here, and in fact, extended our stay to 5 days in order to spend some serious time in the library.  We are getting used to working in the archives- I am not sure we are particularly efficient at searching for records, but we are getting into a rhythm.

We drove on this road every day, and couldn’t count the number of signs letting us know  a curve was ahead.

When our brains are fried, we take a break.  We’re trying to stay reasonably active, and have managed to get to a Planet Fitness in every state we’ve stayed in, so far. No hiking for us in Atlanta, but I did swim laps in the pool.

Our “museum du jour” was the World of Coca-Cola. We spent about 3 hours in this museum, learning about the history of Coca-Cola. When you first walk in you can choose a can of Coca Cola to drink while you wait for the first presentation to start.

The company itself has been around since the late 1800s, and the distinctive bottle has been in use since 1915, when a company in Indiana won a contest to design a unique bottle shape that would be recognizable by feel alone- so that when someone reached into a cooler, they would know they were grabbing a Coke.

At the end of the self guided tour we landed in a room with about 15 Coca-Cola dispensing machines, where you grab a cup and drink as much of the stuff as you want. What was interesting was that each station contained drinks served from different regions of the world, so many of them aren’t even available in the U.S.

When it was time for a bite to eat and a drink we had many restaurants to chose from, right across the street from the museum. Actually, my cousin Brian lives in Atlanta and these are some of the restaurants his company owns. We tried really hard to connect with Brian but he and his family were away on vacation the whole time we were here.

It was quite funny though-we posted on Facebook from the restaurant we chose, and before we could blink,  the manager walked over, introduced herself and told us Brian had called. Oh, and the meal was on the house. Nice! Thanks Brian!

‘Bama (06-25-18)

Our research in Alabama was a long shot, searching for a Frances Chesley, who may or may not be an ancestor of Paul’s, but we figured it was worth a stop in the Montgomery area to check it out.  We have never been here before, and we both liked the feel of the (small) city.

The architecture was interesting and the city had a clean feel to it.

We found a nearby COE  (Federal) campground, with long, level sites for our stay in Montgomery. It was the first time Paul  got to use his Old Farts Pass(senior citizen National Parks Pass) for a discount, so the site only cost us $13 a night! Dozer liked it because it had lots of grass to eat.

It didn’t take us long to realize we weren’t going to find any new information, so we went in search of other things to do. Montgomery is known for its role in our civil rights history of course, and I was interested in the Rosa Parks museum.

While looking online, we discovered that the museum was having a street party celebrating Juneteenth (the end of slavery), and there would be music and food.  As an added perk, the entrance fee to the museum was being waived for the day.

We all know why Rosa Parks is famous. After a long day of working, she refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white person. And she was arrested for it.
Her arrest and the verdict of “guilty” sparked a 13 month long protest that was the beginning of a lot of changes in this country. Shortly after the protest began, they realized they would need to be organized if they were going to achieve any results.

Martin Luther King Jr. was chosen to head the newly formed Montgomery Improvement Association. Their original goal was to boycott the city busses until the segregation laws were made more “fair”. For instance, black people paid for their bus ride by entering the front door of the bus, but then were required to exit, and enter by the rear door.

Feeling that their requests were reasonable, they were shocked when they were denied. It was then that Dr. King realized that “justice and equality would never come while segregation remained, because the basic purpose of segregation was to perpetuate injustice and inequity”.

Now the push was on to fight for desegregation itself.

For 13 months, the African Americans of Montgomery walked, carpooled, rode in makeshift taxis, and accepted rides from white people who agreed that their cause was just. What they didn’t do, is ride the bus. The protest ended when the Supreme Court ruled that segregation on city busses was unconstitutional.

A  small, but important step.