Our RV Adventures

You may remember the new moose that Jan bought a couple weeks ago.

Turns out that Mister likes it too.

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About noon we all headed out, first to visit Wakefield, the George Washington’s Birthplace National Monument, located about 10 miles south of where we’re parked.

This is a replica house, built in the 1930’s, on the foundation of what was thought at the time to be Washington’s birthplace. But it turns out that this was the second house built in this area.

Further excavations in the 1970’s found the actual foundations of Washington’s birth house about 100 yards southeast of the house above.

You can see them outlined in white below.

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We were told the rooms are furnished with pieces of furniture from the era, although Jan and I wondered about this because the dining room chairs shown below are identical down to the fabric, of ones we had in our sticks & bricks. So who knows.

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The canopy bed below is one of only two pieces in the house that actually belonged to the Washington family.

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This is the outside kitchen located about 15 yards away from the main house. This was done for safety reasons because of the fire danger.

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And this was Terry’s favorite outside building, the weaving room. Unfortunately it was locked and we could only look through the window.

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This is the view of Pope’s Creek and the nearby Potomac River. Like the view from the porch at Mt. Vernon, it’s humbling to look out at this scene and know that George Washington once stood here and looked out at this same view.

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One thing we noticed is that there are squirrels everywhere here. And they’re pretty fearless, sitting right in front of you and staring right back at you.

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Leaving Wakefield, we headed south about 10 miles down to Montross to check out Angelo’s Pizza, a place recommended by several of Nick’s blog readers. And boy was it good!

Nick said his pizza was some of the best pizza he’s ever eaten. And Jan loved hers too.

Terry had the Baked Lasagna and I had the Combo Baked Spaghetti with sausage, pepperoni, mushrooms, and meatballs.

Delicious!

And we all had some great baklava for dessert. We all agreed we wanted to come back.

Coming back to the park I was hoping to pick up an Amazon package from the office, but they were already closed, so that’s for tomorrow.

Tomorrow we’re looking forward to visiting Stratford Hall, Robert E. Lee’s birthplace. As it turns out there’s a lot of ‘birthplaces’ around here. James Monroe’s is right down the road, but it’s already closed for the season. So maybe next year.

Following up on the Washington theme, I’ve reposted our visit to Mt. Vernon in 2009.

Enjoy.

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Thought for the Day:

Luck is the residue of opportunity and design.

– John Milton

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Mt. Vernon, George Washington, but no cherry tree…

Originally posted on July 11, 2009

This is our last full day here in the Washington DC area, so we started it with breakfast for one last time at the Silver Diner.

After that we drove down to Mt Vernon to visit George Washington’s home on the Potomac River.

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We got there about 11 am and the place was packed. They were already into overflow parking.

After watching a very good film at the Welcome Center on George Washington in the French and Indian War, and the Revolutionary War, we headed up the house itself.

And ran into a very long line.

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They said it would take about 55 minutes to get into the house.

They lied. It took over 90 minutes to get in.

But in the meantime, we got to see some very old trees lining the path that were planted by George Washington.

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They even have these old trees protected with lightning rods to keep them safe.

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Finally we got within sight of the actual house itself.

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After touring the very large house (over 9000 square feet in three floors) we got to sit on the wide front porch and look out on the same river view that George Washington used to enjoy.

One interesting tidbit we learned from one of the guides during the house tour was that George and Martha must have presented a somewhat odd appearance as a couple.

George was about 6′ 3″ and Martha was 4′ 11″. Talk about ‘stooping to conquer”.

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And from the big smile on her face, Jan enjoys it too.

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After leaving Mount Vernon, we drove over to Alexandria, VA to eat at the Chart House restaurant on the Potomac River.

After a very good meal we headed back to the coach to get ready to leave tomorrow morning.

much less Thanksgiving!

So how come I’m seeing Target Christmas ads?

IT’S TOO EARLY FOR CHRISTMAS ADS!

I worked on a few things around the rig this morning, but mostly we just enjoyed our coffee and some of Miss Terry’s peanut butter cookies.

About 3pm Nick and I headed out to the Post Office in Colonial Beach to send some stuff out. Coming back we saw this place, Jim’s Antique Motors, which looked interesting with a lot of old cars, but wasn’t open. Turns out we need to call him to make an appointment

Hopefully we’ll be able to see it before we leave the area.

Getting back to the park, I stopped off at the office to pick up a package from Amazon that I ordered just yesterday, using the $3.99 next day delivery option that comes with having Amazon Prime. And I seem to have discovered a way to get FREE overnight shipping from Amazon.

Yesterday I ordered 3 items, 1 to be shipped overnight at the $3.99 rate, and then two more items in a separate order a few minutes later, shipped at the Free two day rate. And in this case, Amazon combined them all in one order and shipped all three items in one box overnight.

And this was the second time this happened.

About 4pm we all headed out to drive around the area some more, taking in the many unique waterfront homes along the way.

Then a little later we ended up at Fat Freda’s, a well-review little restaurant in Colonial Beach.

The food was good, good enough, that hopefully we’ll go back.

Coming home I stopped for gas at a 7-11 and ended up in a little excitement. Just as I was finishing up and waiting for my receipt, I heard liquid running on the other side of my pump, along with a female scream. Looking around to the other side I saw gasoline gushing out from the top of the gas pump. The hose had pulled out of the connector and we were all standing in a puddle of gas.

Unlike a lot of pumps, this one didn’t have an Emergency Shutoff on the pump island, so I yelled at the girl to get out of the gasoline and I ran into the store and told them to hit the switch.

Coming back out I found my truck sitting in a pool of gas, and not wanting to take a chance starting up while sitting there, Nick and I pushed it about 20 feet away before we headed out.

Before we went back to the park we decided to drive around for a while. Both George Washington’s and Robert E. Lee’s birthplaces are just a few miles from here, so we wanted to check out their locations before probably visiting them tomorrow.

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Thought for the Day:

I can neither confirm or deny that; even if I could, I couldn’t – it’s classified.

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