The hostage turret

The Norfolk area is a treasure trove of military history; you could easily spend a week here touring all the museums and battlefields. Heck, you could spend a week in the Newport News Maritime Museum. Alas, our trip is a short one as we have unfinished projects at home we are anxious to complete.

We arrived at the Newport News City Park on Saturday afternoon after a smooth trip down the Delmarva Peninsula and settled into the sparsely occupied campground. The park is a gem, with camping sites widely dispersed throughout a forest setting. It’s a night and day difference from the trailer park atmosphere of the Delaware Seashore State Park. While walking the girls in the campground we discovered earthworks from the Civil War in amongst the RV sites in two areas of the park. 

Fortifications from the Battle of Damn #1, (Battle of Yorktown)

On Sunday we morning we went to the Mariners Museum which is about 6 miles from our campsite. The museum has changed a lot since my last visit in the 90’s. Millie has also visited in the past and neither of us even recognized it. That’s not to say we have memory problems, the museum has been changing since it’s founding in the 1930’s. Now at 90,000 square feet of exhibition galleries it also has the largest maritime library in the world.

Another thing the museum now has is artifacts from the USS Monitor which was an iron clad warship in the Civil War. Its claim to fame is not that its iron clad, there had been armored vessels before the Monitor. Its notoriety comes from an encounter with the CSS Virginia on March 9th 1862. This was the first time in American history that iron clad warships had met in battle.

The CSS Virginia was constructed on the hull of the USS Merrimac

Note: No photographs of the CSS Virginia are known to exist, only drawings and paintings.

I stayed up till 11:30 last night writing about the Monitor and Merrimack aka CSS Virginia and after I went to bed I lay there and thought, no one is interested enough to read my narrative, so I deleted it all. I do suggest you look at the Mariners Museum website, you’ll find it very interesting.

 http://www.marinersmuseum.org/

Before we leave the subject I do have a thought on the aftermath of this Civil War Naval engagement. While I am originally from the north, I don’t consider myself a Yankee. My ancestors immigrated to this country some 50 years after the Civil War; you might say I don’t have a dog in this fight. I live in the south now, in the middle of the confederate heartland and I can clearly sense that the war is not forgotten, nor Yankees forgiven. As an unbiased observer I contend that the monitor’s turret is being held hostage by confederate sympathizers!

Long may we remember our history

Although some historians claim the battle was a draw, the monitor did keep the Virginia trapped in Hampton Roads until the Confederate vessel was destroyed by her own crew. This happened on May 11, 1862, following the fall of Norfolk to Union forces. I suspect they never really got over that; insult to injury. The USS Merrimack aka CSS Virginia was a hazard to navigation and was removed and scrapped, (Note: the harbor was now controlled by the north) very few artifacts survived.

The USS Monitor was lost to a storm off Cape Hatteras on December 31 1862 and remained lost for almost a century. In 1973, a team of scientists led by John G. Newton of the Duke University Marine Laboratory located the Monitor while testing geological survey equipment. (Note: Duke University is in the southern city of Durham North Carolina.)

The Monitor remained relatively obscure in its watery grave for almost 25 more years. When the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Note: Silver Springs, Maryland) warned that the wreck was deteriorating in it’s location off the stormy coast it was decided to remove some of the artifacts for preservation.

Propeller from the Monitor

On April 30 2000, teams from NOAA (Maryland), the Cambrian Foundation (Florida) and the National Undersea Research Center/University of North Carolina at Wilmington (NURC), and East Carolina University (ECU) began survey and small artifact recovery operations.

Ships lantern from the masthead on the turret of the Monitor, the last thing the survivors saw as the ship sank.

On August 5 of 2000 the turret was raised from its underwater grave. The largely Southerner salvagers rushed the northern ironclad artifact to the Maritime Museum in Newport News, Virginia. The turret was quickly submerged in a 90 thousand gallon tank of secret solution (looks like water to me) purposely to preserve it. 

The turret of the USS Monitor

And there it has remained all these years, 14 years last month. If any Yankees want to view the artifact from their ship they must climb a catwalk and peer thru a glass window to the tank below. No one is saying how long the turret will remain in the tank; I wouldn’t be expecting Johnny Reb to release it anytime soon!

Disclaimer: While my turret story was intended to be humorous, I may have to keep a lookout for stray musket balls heading in my direction. During the proof read to my southern wife, she didn't give me her normal approval but was strangely quiet. When I told her it was supposed to be funny, she replied "That depends on who's reading it."

That afternoon we visited Millie’s Aunt Ida and Uncle O’neil in nearby Hampton. Cousin’s Judy and Sharon came to their parent’s home during our visit so there was lots of catching up on family members near and far. Millie got a few pieces of information from Aunt Ida for her genealogy research project. After a pleasant visit we returned to the motorhome in time to take the dogs for a long walk around the park. The park was almost empty on Sunday afternoon and after dark you could only see the lights of about 5 campers in the woods, the closest one being about 200 yards away.

Our campsite at Newport News City Park

On Monday, we waited till after rush hour and then started our journey south. We were only about 300 miles from home and decided to make the trip in one day. We traveled down Rt 13 from the Norfolk area until intersecting with Rt 17. We prefer 17 to the interstate; it’s not as boring or hectic as I-95, which always seems to be one or the other.

The passage was uneventful and we arrived home at about 4:30 on Monday afternoon. The motorhome has been cleaned and put back in storage. We are home for awhile or I should say we’re at the beach home for awhile, as we feel equally at home on the road!

Reidsville NC to Newport News, VA

Sunday Sept 14^th we drove a leisurely 200 miles from Lake Reidsville NC to Bowling Green VA. Along the way we drove past the Farm that that Millie would have retired to if her late husband had not become ill. My condolences to the family on his loss, especially to his daughter RaeAnne but I’m awful glad that Millie is now with me. Having her as my wife is a gift that I cherish everyday. A little further along but still near the farm we stopped at Sheldon’s restaurant for chicken and dumplings.

Millie at Sheldon's restaurant in Virginia

The rest of the day was uneventful; we overnighted at Hidden Acres Family Campground at Bowling Green. The next day, Monday we continued on to Lum’s Pond State Park. I have been coping with a sore back since we left Myrtle Beach, and it wasn’t getting any better. I had planned on taking Millie to Longwood Gardens on Tuesday but instead spent the day recuperating. We did get out in the afternoon to the grocery store and stopped for a brief visit with my brother Dave.

My parents, Mary and John Midash

Wednesday we visited my parents who are 90 and 91 and still live in the same house they’ve been in since 1953. My Brother Dave lives 2 miles away and checks on them daily. Later that evening we met old friends for dinner at Shaffer’s Restaurant in Chesapeake City MD. The Kalmar Nyckel a replica of the ship the Swedes first sailed to Delaware in 1638 was docked a few feet from where we enjoyed our meal and camaraderie.

My friends, Chuck and Sallie

The Kalmar Nyckel in Chesapeake City, Maryland

Thursday we visited my parents again and then met my son and his family at Los Machados for a Mexican dinner. The next morning we packed up the motorhome and drove about 75 miles south to the Delaware Seashore State Park campground at Indian River Inlet.

My granddaughter Delaney Midash

The new bridge over the inlet is finally open and the state park campground in its shadow is getting back to some order, although staying in the section called the old camp still reminds me of an trailer park. Why do I stay here? It is the only campground in Delaware from which you can walk to the ocean. The inlet bridge project has been going on since 2004, making it the only bridge that took longer to build than the back gate overpass in Myrtle Beach! The back gate project is a simple highway overpass, it is not open yet after years of construction.

The bridge over the Indian River inlet in Delaware

My brother John and his wife Sandy recently moved to the area and they drove over to visit us at the Inlet. The next day, Saturday we drove the length of the rest of the Delmarva Peninsula, crossed 20+/- miles over/under the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay via the Bay bridge Tunnel. We then traversed the city of Norfolk and took another tunnel under Hampton Roads and then on to the city of Newport News. We are staying at a city park campground here and will be here for another day.

Maggie my copy writer hard at work on this posting

North Carolina wedding

I’m sure my son or any other youngster would listen to me trying to describe how busy I am and reply “you’ve been home since when and that’s all you’ve done!” I guess the truth is, for a variety of reasons it takes me longer to get things done. So here we are at summers end and I haven’t completed everything I had planned, oh the stress of it all, I need a vacation!

Mirror removal

Lucky for me we had planned on attending a wedding in North Carolina, so unfinished projects be damned, we’re off on another road trip!

It was an easy run of a little over 200 miles to the city park at Reidsville North Carolina from our home in Myrtle Beach. The park on Lake Reidsville has a nice campground and we had reserved a waterfront site. We had a beautiful view of the lake out the windshield.

The wedding is south of Reidsville in Kernersville but we chose our location so we could take a short drive up to Axton Virginia on Saturday morning to visit Millie’s brother and his wife. Earnest and Nancy are doing pretty well all things considered. This was my second visit to their home and it was as enjoyable as my first, they’re good folks and easy to feel comfortable around. We picked some home grown tomatoes from their garden and they are delicious, the best we’ve had this season.

 On Saturday afternoon we attended the wedding of Kimberly Brooke Yow and Robert Kyle Self. The wedding celebration was performed outdoors at Dewberry Manor, a farm house setting banquet facility. 

The wedding party

Myself, Millie, Kimberly, Robert

The groom, Robert Self is the grandchild of Millie’s sister Lucille and her husband Eddie Self. I got to meet both of Eddie and Lucille’s sons and some of their grandchildren. It was interesting to but faces with names I’ve heard about. Millie is southern you know and story telling is part of their heritage so I’m treated to many family narratives. Another of Millie’s sisters, Betty and her husband Paul were also at the wedding. They have the blueberry farm near Mount Rogers that I’ve written about in previous blogs. 

Dewberry Manor Farm

The weather which looked threatening all day held off and the wedding and reception both were enjoyed outdoors on Dewberries large courtyard. From all accounts, a good time was had by all; they were still dancing when we left!

July Road trip

Posted 7-28-2014

7-26-2014 Millie and I have been on the road again. It’s a short trip and I wasn’t going to write about it in the blog but Millie said we should just for our own recollection. It’s a writer’s morning here in Mount Rogers National Forest, overcast with a spattering of rain, no cell service and no internet, so I’m tapping out an entry. If you ever want to just get away from everything for a bit, come to southwestern Virginia. Most of Mount Rogers National Forest is beautiful tree covered mountains and very few people. Few people mean few potential customers for the cell companies which mean no cell towers. Folks who live out here still rely on land line telephones, imagine that! We’re here to visit Millie’s sister Betty and her husband Paul who have a small blueberry farm in the shadow of Mount Rogers and White Top Mountain.

We had barely been home from the 5 month road trip before heading out again. We haven’t been up north to visit family for a while. We are already making plans for next winters cross country adventure and wanted to visit family first, so after six busy weeks in Myrtle Beach it was time to go again.

7-13-2014 Once again we took highway 17 north thru the Carolina’s, Virginia, Maryland and Delaware. Our first day took us to Virginia Beach where we stayed one night at Indian Cove Resort. It is a Coast to Coast Affiliate and as members it only cost us $15. 

7-14-2014 Day two took us to our destination in Delaware, Lumm’s Pond State Park.

Delaware has many nice parks in all respects except camping. Lumm’s only has six campsites with electric service. They are almost always booked on weekends so once again our visit was restricted to weekdays. We visited with my parents, brothers and son but missed seeing some of my old friends.

L-R Millie, Dad Midash, Mom Midash, Delaney-Larry-Kristie Midash

7-16-2014 On Wednesday I took Millie to Winterthur, the DuPont mansion in northern Delaware. The house is supposed to have 175 rooms but the tour only went thru about a dozen, don’t know what they’re doing with the rest of it. We’ve been thru so many old houses filled with stuffy old furniture and dark old pictures I guess we’re a bit jaded when it comes to historic mansions. We were impressed with the wide plank flooring and the gardens surrounding the house are very nice. The highlight of the mansion at least from Millies vantage was the display of costumes from the British show Downton Abbey. Winterthur is a real life example of life in the Fictitious Downton Abbey time period.

Winterthur

Downton Abbey exhibit

7-18-2014 Next stop was the Elks Lodge on Kent Island, Maryland. The Stevensville Lodge has four RV sites and we were the only RV there all weekend, cost for visiting Elk members is $20 a night.

7-19-2014 On Saturday we drove the jeep across the Delmarva Peninsula to my brother John and his wife Sandy’s new home outside Lewes Delaware. As expected they have a beautiful new home on a large country lot. 

Baltimore Inner Harbor

7-20-2014 Sunday we went to Baltimore where we toured Fort McHenry. I recommend doing the video presentation before walking the fort. The short film details the events that put the British, the Americans and Francis Scott Key in Baltimore harbor on Sept 13 1814. The end of the film is of course the dawn of the next day when the rising fog revealed the American flag still flying over the fort. Next the screen rolls up exposing a large window looking out over the fort and our flag flying as it did that fateful night.

I know I’m being a bit of a spoiler writing about that but it still raises Goosebumps every time I experience it and I hope it will inspire you to go.  

Fort McHenry

Afterwards we had lunch at La Tasca in the Baltimore tourist area called The Inner Harbor. We enjoyed our meal al fresco, our table overlooking the colonial era warship the USS Constellation. It was our first time at a Spanish restaurant and it was an interesting experience. The food is sold in small portions, the idea is you each chose several and everyone shares the selections. The food was good, reminiscent of Cuban food but not as spicy. While in Baltimore we also did a driving tour thru Fells Point, John’s Hopkins, THE BLOCK, and past the Orioles and Ravens stadiums. 

Naval Academy

7-21-2014 Monday we went to Annapolis to visit the Naval Academy. Annapolis was a frequent port of call in my boating days so I’ve been to the academy several times. In fact we used to ride bikes around the campus before terrorists and the locking down of everything. After going thru security we signed up for a guided walking tour and I highly recommend it. Our tour guide took us inside many buildings that we would never have seen if we were on our own.

Naval Academy

As we walked back to the city dock I suggested lunch at Phillips Seafood which overlooks Ego Alley. The alley is the deadened canal past the city docks which all manor of boats slowly cruise. The parade of watercraft passes the docked boats and tourists of the city dock, the patrons of Prussers’ dockside bar and the experienced eyes of the old naval types at the Fleet Reserve Club, then one by one each craft turns about in the tiny basin and putts back out past the observers. It’s the see and be seen event of the Annapolis boating world. It sounds very vain but it is fun, I’ve done it myself.

Our lunch at Phillips was, sorry to say disappointing, especially to me as I had just told Millie that it originated in Ocean City and was considered the epitome of Maryland crab cuisine. She said Phillips must be a chain as we used to have one in Myrtle Beach. I said a lot of Marylanders would cringe at Phillips being called a chain. Phillips closing down in Myrtle Beach makes sense to me now, our town has hundreds of restaurants and only the very good ones survive.   

7-22-2014 On Tuesday we departed Kent Island and crossed the Bay Bridge for the third time in as many days. Our first stop for the day was due west of the District of Columbia so in keeping with our local road philosophy we shunned the many ribbons of beltway and took the motorhome with jeep in tow straight thru the capitol. We even went down Constitution Ave past the Memorials Mall and all the museums.

Constitution Ave in DC

A word of warning; just about every traffic signal we went through in the city was a photo enforced red light. As is usually the case the light timing was very short, the system is clearly more of revenue generator than safety device. 

Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center

West of the city we stopped at Dulles International Airport to visit the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center which is an extension of the Smithsonian air and Space Museum. The museum has many finely restored civilian and military airplanes as well as space exhibits, the most prominent being the space shuttle, Discovery. The most famous aircraft on the aviation side is the B-29 bomber that ended World War 2, the Enola Gay. 

Space Shuttle Discover

Before leaving the museum we found my Dad’s name which is engraved on one of the foils that frame the entrance to the museum. He spent his whole working life, including 3 years of World War Two in aviation and my brothers and I thought it would be appropriate for his name to be a permanent part of the museum.

Entrance to Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center

Moving on we drove west to Front Royal and overnighted at Skyline Ranch Resort. It is also a Coast to Coast Affiliate so only cost us $15. The next morning we did the long drive down I-81 to the southwestern corner of Virginia. I-81 is actually a very scenic, when you drive down Skyline Drive the highway you see in wide valley to the west is I-81. So 81 is kind of like Skyline Drive except its straight and shared with 60,000lb tractor trailers doing 70mph.

That brings us back to Mount Rogers and our stay in Southwestern Virginia. Besides visiting with family where we also we picked blueberries, we rode bikes on the Virginia Creeper Trail. The Virginia Creeper is a railroad to trail conversion, the popular portion of it runs 17 miles from the top of Mount Rogers to Damascus Virginia. We rode the entire distance which sounds very impressive, until I mention that it is almost all downhill. 

Virginia Creeper trail

7/27/2014 We drove home to Myrtle Beach today. It was an easy uneventful ride. We really enjoy our time on the road but it’s always good to be back home again!

Home again

Home again

I had the final posting for the road trip almost done, but I lost it when the brand new computer died. When I say died I mean just that, it was running fine and in a second it had a terminal cardiac arrest, lights out and no heartbeat. I sent it back to the company that had customized it for me and they couldn’t resurrect it. They have sent it back to ASUS. I’m writing this on the old ASUS which except for a couple sticky keys is working fairly well; I guess it just needed a rest.

White Sands National Monument

Millie and I both agree this was one of the best trips we’ve had so far, we saw and did all sorts interesting things.  Wintering in Florida was a great start, but this year we didn’t return straight home. In the simplest terms we followed the gulf coast to Mexico, then on to west Texas, and up thru New Mexico before turning east for home. 

Crossing the Pecos river in Texas

Along the way we strolled the French quarter of New Orleans, Biked the beach front promenade in Biloxi, toured the Tabasco Factory on Avery Island, took the motorhome on a ferry boat across Galveston Bay, rode the gondola 700 feet to the top of the St Louis Arch, saw four musical shows in Branson Missouri, Crossed the border and spent a day in Mexico, Climbed to the ruins of an ancient Indian community on top of a mesa in New Mexico, toured the corvette factory in Bowling Green Kentucky, visited big bend National Park in Texas, played the ponies at Churchill downs, went to the Grand Ole Opry, climbed the dunes at the White Sands National Park, explored the caves at Carlsbad Caverns, visited the Angel Fire Vietnam Veterans Memorial in northern New Mexico, in San Antonio we stood in the shadow of greatness at the Alamo.

Biloxi Mississippi

It goes without saying that Los Alamos is an important part of every trip out west and this time we spent two weeks camped in Dave and RaeAnne’s driveway. We got to see the grandkids everyday, Millie got to spend time with her daughter and the dogs and I got to do a lot of hiking in the National Forest that adjoins their house.

Pensacola Naval Aviation Museum

Our 6000 mile road trip lasted four and one half months and took us thru fifteen states. Whenever we could we traveled on secondary roads, that’s were the real America is. It’s the best advice I can give about Rving in the USA, get off the interstate and take the road less traveled. 

On the trolley, New Orleans Louisiana

         

We returned home on the 30^th of May and haven’t slowed down yet. We had the normal transitional duties such as cleaning out the motorhome, putting it in storage and getting settled in at the condo. We have been guests at two dinners given by some of our neighbors here at the Cane Patch and attended the annual owners meeting where I was reelected to the Board of directors for two more years.

International traveler

Millie has resumed her early morning beach walks and I’m enjoying riding my bike around the neighborhood. The girls love their late afternoon walks on the shore. The minnows are starting to travel the swash (creek that empties into the ocean) down the beach from us and the girls chase them around in the shallow water. They have so much fun that I feel guilty on the nights that we leave them home so Millie and I can stroll barefoot in the moon light.

The Riverwalk in San Antonio

Millie has been busy with the garden committee planting summer flowers around the complex and Doug and I have done a couple electrical repairs that were awaiting my return. Our big project for the summer is rebuilding the pool pump house; we have demolished the old one and have the framing up for the new one.

Spanish market in San Antonio

  

We’ve made a technology change here at the condo that we’re excited about. We have been using been using Verizon Wireless both at home and on the road for internet access but it has gotten very expensive. We have added internet service by our cable TV service provider here at the condo and reduced the broadband usage on the Verizon account. I can jack it back up again next time we are traveling. 

Taos Gorge

The exciting part of all this is our big flat screen TV is a smart TV and we now have it connected to the internet. We switched our Netflix account from mail to download and are downloading and watching movies almost every night. It’s such a neat feature that we are going to replace the TV on the veranda with a smart model.  Soon we will be watching movies under the stars with ambiance provided by the twinkling lights of the big hotels and the sound of the surf.

Life is good, it’s very good!

See you down the road.