Road TRIP!!!

Part 1 - Liberty, ME to Boston, MA
Part 2 - Brooklyn
Part 3 - Damascus, Virginia 
Part 4 - Williamsburg, Virginia
Part 5 - back to Maine via Newport, RI




Part 1
Before starting the new job, I took a week long road trip to drive to Virginia and pick Judd up after his 507 or so miles on the Appalachian Trail. The trip came on the heels of a week long yoga retreat in Liberty, Maine (well, only 2 hours a day for a week) but I was very centered, focused, calm and limber.  It only took about 6 hours in the car to reverse some of that.

I had one stop in Freeport for "school shopping" which for me, was "new-work shopping."  The sidewalks were festooned with a million jack-o-lanterns.  I bet they looked amazing lit up at night. My over night stay was in Boston to look up  Colby friend Kate. After my huge failure at picking a hotel near the T (but it was near a train....that only went by once an hour,) I messed up my Kate-cook-dinner-for-me date.  Kate graciously came to Dedham, MA and picked me up for a restaurant dinner. I became exquisitely self-conscious about what the concierge had selected for me as a "quiet restaurant:" (Wicked). Kate, and her service dog Cheyenne- for hearing-challenged Kate, were welcomed to the restaurant but I became aware of every baby banging spoons on the table or every clatter of dishes from the kitchen. It was also interesting to me that the waiter wouldn't look at Kate when explaining the menu items and after he left, Kate noted that it was because he assumed she was blind. (Cheyenne wears a "Service Dog vest" but most people are used to see-ing eye dogs.) Kate works for the city of Cambridge on issues of people with disabilities.  It looks like our culture has a way to go.

https://www.cambridgema.gov/DHSP/programsforadults/ccpd.aspx

Part 2  
I was pretty impressed with myself at driving from Boston to Brooklyn and finding a parking place right on Becky's street. At times I had my car GPS, my phone mapquest and my paper mapquest as back up in my lap for when the GPS goes out. (And it always does just about when you have to make a critical get off or go-straight at 70 miles per hour decision.) It was pretty quiet on a Saturday morning and I could have had my pick of several parking spots. My cell phone died precisely after my text to Becky that I had arrived. Becky and I walked to an open market with rows and rows of food and crafts and clothes and art and old used stuff. My favorite was a young woman who made adorable little cloth dolls and then a whole wardrobe of little clothes in which to dress them.   At craft fairs, I always intend to save money by not buying things but archiving ideas in my memory to copy later.  It doesn't always work (he memory part.) When we were leaving, we happened upon the doggie Halloween parade just getting over:  LOTS of dogs and little kids in costumes.  We saw SO MANY under two-year old lions--there must have been some massive costume sale somewhere.  Becky sees students or parents she knows from the Montessori school where she is librarian,  all over town. They all look so happy to see her. We saw an outrageously large white dog and I thought it was in costume. Becky had actually photoed it previously. It was really good to see Becky at her apartment and see her neighborhood and finally meet Pike. Lots of good long conversations.


Other highlights:
Black Iris, Mediterranean restaurant
Drop Dead Fred on Netflix
Cocktails and dinner at Henry Public (is the wait staff always dressed for Halloween?  
           Our hostess looked just like Wednesday from the Addams Family)
Trader Joe's in an old bank
big sticky donuts from DOUGH
morning grits and eggs at SCRATCH
fairy wine: Lambrusco (which we can't fit into our itinerary, so I took home to imbibe) FOOTNOTE: Malindi and I have since enjoyed the fairy wine--airy bubbles that tickle your nose)

pic from www.traderjoes.com/‎ website

I saw this dog on Halloween weekend doing other unnatural stuff

Departing NY

Part 3

It was a     l  o   n    g      way from NYC to Damascus, VA. Nine hours and 40 minutes, IF you don't get lost, IF don't stop to potty or eat or stretch your sciatica, and IF don't have an hour long traffic jam by a jack knifed semi truck. SO, I didn't make it in one day. I stopped at a nice Holiday Inn somewhere just into Virginia and had a hotel vacation. Judd did the same in Damascus and we met up the next day in a little cafe there, crawling with hikers. Some hikers stop for the winter and find a day-job and a room until spring when it's warm enough to resume hiking. Judd looked healthy and happy and 20 pounds lighter. He was up for driving just when my bottom and shoulders couldn't take it anymore. We drove until we found a random winery.

Attimo Winery just happened to be the most awarded in the state. We had a sampler of whites (Yesterday's Song, Sonnet, Off the Cuff) and a sampler of reds (Deep Silence, After Midnight, Bull Frog Symphony, Aviator.)  We got a discount for buying a whole case -- half red/half white. (We're good shoppers.) The wine maid (is that what she's called if she'd not a bar maid?) recommended the Inn at Virginia Tech, just 20 minutes away so we got a nice dinner-out and a room. The Inn and restaurant are run by students going into the hospitality service and they were very eager to serve us.

Un-natural road side stop

Attimo Winery

Williamsburg was still a 5+ hour drive the next day so we arrived at Peace Corps friend, Kirk's a bit after noon. Kirk hopped us right in the car to start a 1.6 day tour of historic Williamsburg, Yorktown and Jamestown, lamenting that we really needed 3 days to see everything. We said we didn't want to see everything, we wanted to see him. But we saw a lot. We visited Williams and Mary campus, old Williamsburg, new Williamsburg (more malls and townhouses than you've ever seen,) the Archaearium at Jamestown---say that 3 times fast. The first night we had dinner at a Benjamin Franklin inspired: Food for Thought  http://www.foodforthoughtrestaurant.com/ We had very good fare and supported our waiter who was saving up for a honeymoon. After very intense sight-seeing, the second night we ate at  one of the historic taverns in old Williamsburg, complete with wandering bard, traditional dress and old fashioned ales. We still had time after dinner to shop some of the historic shops.

the Lion and Unicorn play prominently at William and Mary

View from the armory

Judd copying off of Thomas Jefferson's math test

Part  5 - Williamsburg to Maine via Newport, Rhode Island

We stopped at a Cracker Barrel for breakfast-served-any-time. A real brush with southern Americana--3 times more cholesterol than anyone should eat at a single serving. We shopped for retro candy "for the kids." Remember those little paraffin bottles filled with liquid goo? Yep, we got that.
It was about a 12 hour trip to Newport. Although I had already seen Fall up in Maine (all the colored leaves on the ground after the last rain) I got to see Fall again--lots of color still on the trees in VIrginia, Maryland, and New Jersey.  We left 6am and hit a little traffic near the big cities so ended up at Judd's big brother Richard's, in Newport ,Rhode Island, in the dark, about 6pm.  We walked to his favorite sushi restaurant and the next morning, after breakfast at Franklin Spa (which is not a spa but a restaurant,) Richard showed us his business. He uses pulverized glass to spray boats to clean their hulls, large and small.
http://www.rhodeislandsodaclean.com/nojobtoobig.html

 We stopped in Kittery to see Aunt Rosie at the Lobster Barn. Judd is so out of practice, he by-passed York headed north from Kittery and we had to double back along Route 1. Rosie had pictures and stories about Cousin Kate and her girls and Cousin Emi married and starting a family. It was nice to catch up with so many people in one week before we start the next new adventure: hunkering down for the winter.          

Driving home on Halloween

Judd hiking - 507 miles 

Melanie driving - 1034 miles

Judd + Melanie driving  - 1242 miles

THAT's a road trip!