Stafford, VA (04-29-13)

This is a first for us- we are driveway camping!  Usually when someone offers for us to stay in their driveway, we decline.  Most people, even when we tell them we are 36 feet long, have no concept of how big we actually are.  But Charley and Deloris are RVers and have spent time in our rig.  We met them in the Florida Keys and when they heard we were headed this way, they offered their driveway to us. 

It still wasn’t easy getting in, but we made it, and we’ll be here for a couple of days before we leave for the other side of Washington DC.

In the meantime we are having fun spending time with them, and exploring this area.  I didn’t know that Stafford was the boyhood home of George Washington, but I do now!  There are a ton of civil war sites in this area, including a brand new park, 10 minutes from Charley’s house.  We went with them and their son Jake to opening day, when they had a re-enactment of a Union Winter Camp.

Charley and Jake were surprised to see that it was a Union camp, since so many of the sites around here are Confederate. 

After having our fill of the  Civil War, we ate at our first “Five Guys” hamburger place.  The burger was excellent, as were the fries.

The weather hasn’t been the greatest, probably because, as Charley says, we moved too far north too fast.  Since it rained the next day, Paul and I decided to head to Quantico, to the National Marine Corp Museum, so we could stay inside all day. This is a free museum, dedicated to all things Marine Corp, and it is very well done.

The Marine Corp was started in 1775 and has been a vital part of our Armed Services ever since.  On the legacy wall there are plaques with pictures and hand written notes from marines.  The notes answered the question “why did you join the Marines” and the answers ranged from the philosophical to “ I was bored after high school”.

There are numerous rooms with information from different eras, including some “immersion” scenes, where you walk into a room and are inside a battle scene, complete with audio and visual. This scene depicts the “frozen Chosin Reservoir” during the Korean War.

The scene below represents the Viet Nam War- you enter through the airplane into a room that is hot, noisy with gunfire, and depicts a medivac situation.

There was an entire room dedicated to the music of the Marine Corp. The Marine Band was established by Congress in 1798, but became more well known under the direction of John Phillip Souza in the late 1800s.  At this virtual stage, we could press a button and listen to the Marine Band play a Souza march. I listened to all 4 that were available, of course.

The last room was a memorial for September 11, 2001

There was a timeline showing the events of the day, and it was all mesmerizing to me.

 

Reading cryptic signs simply stating things such as the time each plane became non-responsive to air traffic control, or when each plane’s GPS tracking device was turned off, was chilling. That day is so etched in our collective memories, it was odd to listen to the conversation of some nearby young teens who were discussing how old they were when it happened. They were all too young to remember it. 

Even though the weather was wet, we only had one more day, so we headed to Fredericksburg to tour the battle sites there.  Fredericksburg was the site of one of the first urban battles.  It was literally fought in the streets and most of the town was destroyed.

Originally a Confederate town, the Union army, led by General Burnsides, arrived to seize Fredericksburg for the North.  Unfortunately for him, he made a few huge tactical errors.  The most costly one was a timing error. He needed pontoon bridges in order to cross the river, and they were two weeks late in arriving.

During those two weeks, General Lee was busy amassing his troops. By the time Burnsides was able to cross the river, the Confederate army was 85,000 men strong, and held the easily defended hillsides of the town. As a result, the battle was one of the bloodiest, one sided battles in the Civil War.  In one day alone, 7500 Union soldiers fell- some wounded, some dead.

With the battle still raging, Richard Kirkland, a confederate soldier, couldn’t stand the injured Union troops cries for water.  He filled canteens full of water and under enemy fire, brought the canteens to the wounded.  When the Union soldiers figured out what he was doing, they stopped shooting at him and cheered him on.  He is called the Angel of Marye’s Heights.

Fredericksburg was at the epicenter of many Civil War battles, and there are over 20,000 Civil War graves in this area.  Very few headstones contain names- most of them are unknown soldiers.

Texas Hill Country (11-20-12)

Hill Country was home to President Lyndon B. Johnson.  In fact, although his ranch was donated to the National Park Service years ago, his daughters and grandchildren still visit the area and have cottages here.



When LBJ donated his ranch to the NPS, it was with a stipulation that it remain a viable working ranch, not a static “relic” of the past, so as we took the driving tour, we could see the animals, and some of the ranch hands working with them.





LBJ spent 25% of his time as President in his office at this ranch and was the first president to have an “offsite White House”. He worked here because he felt it kept him grounded to be surrounded by the “real” America. 


In the center of the ranch is an airstrip, where many heads of foreign countries and top officials were flown in to be guests at the ranch, and many deals were made out here in Hill Country.  Relaxing wasn’t high on LBJ’s list of things to do, and he wrote more legislation than any other president, before, or since.  Over 300 pieces of legislation related to conservation and environmentalism, including the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act and the Water Pollution Act.



Although the tour of the ranch  and the nearby Sauer Beckman farm was free, it cost $2 per person to tour the ranch house, and no interior picture taking is allowed.  It was worth it to see where he spent his time, and learn more about this president. The ranch house has 28 telephones, which we all know, back in the 60’s, was unheard of. 

Touring the ranch house brought back some childhood memories for me, since it is decorated in the typical style of the 1960, the era I grew up in.  In one of the movies they show, LBJ mentioned the spelling bee they used to have in elementary school, where all the kids lined up and the first person in line had to spell a word.  If it was spelled correctly, they went to the rear of the line, and if they were wrong, they sat down.  I had forgotten those spelling bees! I also learned that LBJ didn’t start college until he was 26, but he did graduate and became a teacher.  The bulk of his income came from the radio and TV stations he bought.

The Pedernales River runs through the LBJ ranch, and nearby is Pedernales State Park.  We checked that out, did some hiking, and really wished we were here when it was warm enough to swim!  The water looked awesome and the bouldering was a lot of fun.

We were staying just outside the town of Fredericksburg, so we ventured into town for some lunch and shopping.  We found Hondo’s on Main St. which had good reviews and live music out on the patio.  The weather was perfect for sitting outside for a while!

Texas Hill Country, Part 2 (12-17-11)

Continuing on with Fredericksburg:
     Fredericksburg is home to a world class museum- The National Museum of the Pacific War.  Why is it located in Fredericksburg? Because Admiral Chester Nimitz was raised in Fredericksburg.  Like many museums, this one is huge and can be overwhelming.  It was divided into small rooms and each room had a theme, whether it was a person, a battle or something else of significance that happened before or during WWII.  We skipped some rooms completely and others we investigated thoroughly. I spent some time in the Midway room-having seen the movie about it a million times, it was interesting to see more details regarding how it all happened and why it went down the way it did.  At that time, the Americans knew an attack was planned on something the Japanese code referred to as “AF”, but they were in disagreement over what the target “AF” actually was.  The American code breakers had broken some of the Japanese code, but not all of it, so key information was missing. Someone came up with a simple ruse.  The personnel at Midway were instructed to radio to the mainland that they were running low on water.  Soon thereafter, a Japanese message was intercepted that stated that “AF was low on water”, and the target was confirmed. Quite clever!
Many of the rooms had backlit tables that showed movement of troops and ships, complete with a narration that explained when and how a particular battle took place.  It did a great job of giving us an overall sense of what happened, and what significance a particular battle had. This room was the Iwo Jima Room. 


Some of the rooms were about the people- sometime soldiers, but also the general population, and the effect the war was having on everyone.  There was one room that talked about rationing.  My mom was a young teen during that time and I remember her telling us about the rationing, and collecting metal to donate to the cause.  She and the other kids in the neighborhood used to go around with a wagon, collecting whatever they could for the war effort.
Another room was dedicated to the Sullivan family from Iowa.  There were 5 Sullivan “boys” in the navy.  Although there were technically rules against  family members serving on the same ship, one of the brothers asked for, and was granted, permission for all of them to serve on the USS Juneau.  In November of 1942, the USS Juneau was sunk during the battle of Guadalcanal. There were only 10 survivors, and none of them were named Sullivan.  Security was such the navy didn’t want it to get out that the Juneau was lost, so the family was not notified right away and in fact, Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan heard rumors from neighbors that her boys had been lost, and wrote to
 



A separate building houses a small museum dedicated to Admiral Chester Nimitz and his life, and down the street there is an indoor/outdoor arena called the Pacific Combat Zone that contains realistic, life-size models of  battlefields, PT boats and an aircraft hanger on an aircraft carrier.



   

 By now it was close enough to Christmas that the downtown lights were all ablaze and the annual “Christmas Journey” was supposed to take place while we were in town.  The Journey is a drive through “show” of the story of Christmas, portrayed by live actors.  Unfortunately it rained the last night, which was when we had planned on going, so the show was canceled. When we got to San Angelo, we found out they have a “drive thru” holiday show as well, but it isn’t comprised of live people.  Its an enormous light display. Even though it rained while we were there, we did manage do do the drive-thru. They had everything from the “12 days of Christmas” scenes to an animated Snowman machine.

the snowman machine

 


There is a small historic downtown shopping area, and some pretty good hiking in the San Angelo area.  We did an 8 mile hike in San Angelo State Park and Paul used his Iphone to geocache for the first time.  We found 2 caches

Texas Hill Country, part 1 (12-11-11)

    Before I discuss Texas Hill Country, I will explain why this post has been so delayed.  I made the mistake about 10 days ago of  mentioning that I hadn’t been sick, not even a cold, in about 6 years.  Well, of course, that was a dumb thing to say, since I promptly came down with my first cold in 6  years.  So, anyway, we have left hill country and have been in El Paso for the last few days, where we’ll spend Christmas with Paul’s mom.
      Texas is such a huge state that it is home to several different climates, depending on the region.  West Texas is arid, desert like, with some areas receiving as little as 12 inches of rain per year. The eastern, Piney Woods region, by contrast, is humid and can receive as many as 87 inches of precipitation every year.  It contains numerous forests of pine and hardwood trees-so different from  the deserts of the western part of the state.  The gulf coast is yet another region- one that remains warm all year, and is very hot and humid in the summertime.   Hill Country is sort of in the middle of the state and is known, of course, for it’s rolling hills and many rivers. Usually the weather here is pretty good, but during our stay, mother nature did not cooperate. We had a lot of raw, chilly days, and rain.  We were happy to eventually head towards the drier, western half of the state, but then, it rained, hailed and snowed here in El Paso last night.  Go figure.

     We spent a few days in Fredericksburg, a town that was settled in the1800s by German  immigrants.  This town really gives a lot of “bang for your buck”.  There are at least 6 museums, and an awesome downtown shopping area, full of unique stores and many restaurants, ranging from Southwestern to German food. We ate at a German restaurant with Julie and Mike, and then drove out to Luckenbach with them to listen to some guitar playing. 

 

Luckenbach is a very small unique town that is known for it’s music. It consists of a dozen or so old wooden buildings- one of which is a bar, and one is a dance hall.  Apparently there is music being played in multiple locations on most days, but of course the day we were there the weather was so cold and raw, they were only playing inside the dance hall.  We did enjoy listening for quite a while though.  

More tomorrow…..

Enchanted Rock (12-09-11)

   Enchanted Rock Natural area is about 19 miles outside of Fredericksburg and it has about  8 miles of trails.  We have been really antsy to get some decent hiking in, and chose yesterday to go there based on the weather forecast.  I started out the day with two sweatshirts on and by 2 pm they were both tied around my waist.  The rock is a 450 ft tall pink granite exfoliation dome that is part of one of the largest batholiths in the U.S.  A batholith  is an underground rock formation that becomes uncovered by erosion.
Although it doesn’t look that big in the pictures, the part that protrudes from the earth (which is really the “tip of the iceberg”) covers 640 acres.  We first took the trail that went straight to the summit, in case we ran out of steam later.  It was pretty steep, a good cardio workout!

Once at the top, we were surprised to see the vernal pools, like oases in the midst of solid granite.  Over a period of many years enough dirt settles into these basins to allow algae to grow, then small plants take root and eventually larger plants, even trees, settle in to these small pockets of water.

                                                                               

                                                                                                                                                                                                           

       

In the distance, we saw an outcropping of rocks, with a sign in front of it.  After figuring out that the sign said “cave entrance”, Paul made a beeline for it. It wasn’t a cave that you could explore, but we spent a fun 30 minutes scrambling around on the boulders and poking around. I was glad we had found it because the scrambling was fun and the views on the other side were awesome!

  We had a great day- this is our favorite kind of hike. It was enough of a cardio workout, somewhat of a challenge, and had plenty for us to see and explore along the way.  And the weather was perfect for it.







An exfoliation dome erodes by essentially sloughing off it’s outer skin, like the peeling of an onion, instead eroding one grain of sand at a time.  We could see evidence of the exfoliation on this chunk of granite, and although the layer peeling off is thin in some places, it’s not as thin as it appears.






the picture below is the same shot as this picture, but zoomed in closer.  In the picture below, you can see the hikers climbing down the boulders.  We could hear them, and the 3 girls were not very happy with the 3 guys.  The guys were happily scrambling down the side of the dome and the girls were not convinced that they were going to make it down safely (they did, though).