Guess what. It rained today -- AGAIN! "Oh, well," we said as we heard the raindrops on the roof this morning, "we're just going to make as many miles as we can in the direction of Colonial Williamsburg, anyway. Who cares what the weather does?" And that's the way the day began. Before long, we were busy listening to a book on CD of some unbelievable international intrigue, and tooling up Interstate Route 81 at a solid sixty miles per hour in the slow lane Over in the fast lane the 18-wheelers were canon-balling by at much faster speeds, but we didn't care. Slow and steady wins the race.
Our goal for the morning was to navigate our way to Virginia Tech, the Alma Mater of Maja, our daughter-in-law, which the map showed was just an hour or so away from our evening campsite. Since the rain precluded everything from a leisurely stroll about the campus, to any decent photographs, we decided that it would be sufficient if we could just find the right town and maybe just motor up and down any campus roads that would accommodate the size of our rig.
This we quite successfully did. We found -- or more properly the GPS found -- the town of Blacksburg, Virginia, on the first try, and then we managed to navigate ourselves around the campus without obviously alarming anyone, nor getting ourselves stuck in some dead-end alley.
Well, at least we almost managed. It was when we were responding to a sign that said "Alumni Association" building that we came across another sign that promised a museum in the area that was dedicated to the Preston Family, Smithfield Plantation. According to the Museum's web site:
"Virginia Tech has agreed to protect the home that helped give the university its start – Historic Smithfield Plantation."
"The Virginia Tech Board of Visitors recently approved the acceptance of an historic easement that gives Virginia Tech the responsibility to ensure the historic nature of Smithfield Plantation, which was once home to the Preston family, whose land eventually became Virginia Tech."
"The Smithfield Preston Foundation will continue to operate the plantation, with its museum, shop, library, and other features. Virginia Tech’s Office of University Planning will regularly inspect the property and ensure that any changes maintain the historical nature of the building and property."
Okay, so you're wondering just why I would care about somebody named Preston and his plantation house, so here goes. My 2-times great grandfather, a chap named John Heath Preston Jones, derived his two middle names from a person or persons totally unknown to me -- or to anyone else for that matter. I've been trying to find out through my genealogical research who he might have been named after, but to no avail.
You're probably aware that in centuries gone by it was standard operating procedure to name your children, at least their middle names, after famous people in history. If you've studied your family tree, you know this to be true. In my opinion John's middle names were concocted from one of two sources. Either they were the maiden names of his mother and grandmother, or they were derived from famous people. Since he was born in 1811, any famous people would probably have become famous because of the American Revolution or similar significant event.
William Preston, for whom the museum was dedicated, wore a wondrous number of hats in his lifetime, including "...being elected to the Virginia colony's House of Burgesses in 1765 and serving in both the French and Indian War and American Revolutionary War. During the French and Indian War, William Preston saved George Washington's life from an impending Indian attack. He also played a crucial role in surveying and developing the colonies going westward, exerted great influence in the colonial affairs of his time, ran a large plantation, and founded a dynasty whose progeny would supply leaders for the South for nearly a century."
I've only recently begun researching Preston, but I feel that it's entirely possible that my 2-times great grandfather got one of his middle names from good ol' William. So, I was very excited when we saw the potential, not only for a nice museum on William's life, but perhaps a supply of research material so that I might find out more about him. We set off immediately to find the museum.
And that's where the trouble began. As we traveled down the already tiny road in pursuit of our quarry, the tiny road became more and more tiny. Then, just about the time I was beginning to have second thoughts about the efficacy of bringing a thirty-one foot rig down this strip of asphalt built for compact cars, we rounded a corner and discovered that the tiny road ended in an equally tiny parking lot. And that wasn't even the bad part, for the tiny parking lot was filled to overflowing with tiny compact cars.
We sat there and studied the problem for a time wondering just what to do. Off to our left, parked on a grassy slope that was NOT the official parking area, we saw two medium-sized school buses. On the south side of the buses there existed a small strip of grass about ten feet wide. I didn't think I could wedge the rig in there, even if I could turn sharply enough to get next to buses and not take out a section of fence that was just to our left.
Thinking perhaps that the museum folks would have been smart enough to anticipate something other than tiny compact cars wanting to visit, I went ahead and rolled on into the parking lot and seconds later stopped at the far end without finding so much as turn-around available so that I could reverse direction. The only thing I could do at that point was back up the way I had come.
This I did, fortunately without banging the sheet-metal of any of the tiny cars. When I finally had reversed enough so I was back adjacent to where the school buses were parked I decided that perhaps it would be better to find a way to use the tiny strip of grass next to the buses to make my turn, rather than attempt to back all the way down the tiny road on which we had arrived.
This was probably a mistake. For once I had turned onto the tiny strip of grass next to the buses, I immediately found that there just wasn't sufficient room. So I tried backing up, but behind us at that point was a grassy knoll about five feet high that I quickly planted the rear bumper against. On my left was the fence. On my right was a bus. Behind me was the grassy knoll. It looked like I was going to need a giant helicopter to lift us vertically out of the predicament.
Once upon a time we got ourselves in just such a predicament while trusting our previous GPS to guide us through Naples, Italy. Naples is not an easy place to drive in the first place, as there's a great deal of what looks like mass confusion going on at all times. The Italians are quite fond of funneling five roads down to one and then sitting back to watch the fun. There are hundreds of motorbikes, pedestrians crossing mid-block, and micro cars zipping in and out of everywhere.
But this particular time in Naples it wasn't our fellow motorists' fault that we briefly courted disaster, it was the fault of our trusted electronic navigational brain. We were trusting it to get us to the downtown Naples museum, and what the GPS did was send us down a very, very narrow alley with cars parked on both sides to that magic point that only happens in cartoons -- a dead end.
Once at the dead end I had the choice of reversing all the way to the alley entrance, about two blocks away, or to try and turn the car around somehow in a space about the size of an average living room. I set about moving six inches one way, then reversing six inches another, over and over, until finally I was able to reverse the car in the alley and escape.
And that's what we ended up doing in the tiny museum parking lot. We had about a foot to deal with. I would go forward until the front bumper kissed up against the fence post, then I would reverse until the rear bumper dug into the soft grass. Over and over again we made minute forwards and backwards movements until I had completely reversed the rig. Fortunately, no one came up behind us, or even tried to leave the museum parking lot, and only one of the school bus drivers even had any inkling of what we were up to. I'm sure that when the groundskeeper sees the divots out of the grassy knoll he is not going to be happy, but at least he doesn't have a five-ton rig to extricate.
At that point we decided that we'd had a nice visit at Virginia Tech, and it was time to get back on Interstate 81 and continue our trek towards Williamsburg. This we did for the rest of the morning until it was time for lunch. About lunchtime we happened to notice a sign for the Virginia Transportation Museum, and we decided that the museum sounded like a great place to stop for awhile, have some food, and get out and stretch our legs at the museum. It was still raining and the Transportation Museum might turn out to be our only chance for entertainment for the day.
Getting to the Transportation Museum was just a tad tricky, but we found it in the end. There was a huge parking lot adjacent, which initially looked good. But then we read the parking lot instructions that said, "Parking here is NOT free. Pay at the booth." We thought that was okay, but when I attempted to pay at the aforementioned booth, the instructions in no way seemed to accommodate anything that took up more than two spaces on a good day. In fact, the instructions said to put your car in a "numbered slot" and put coins in some antiquated gizmo that looked like it was installed just before Theodore Roosevelt took office. Since we had parked at the far end of the lot where there were no lines painted on the asphalt, let alone numbers, we decided to be civilly disobedient. Sometimes it just feels good.
After our lunch, we spent a very pleasant hour viewing all the transportation-related vehicles they had on display. Indoors they had everything from airplanes and cars, to model trains and bus-related items. Outdoors they kept the trains, of course. And there was a huge number of them. I didn't really see any railroad-related equipment that set my heart aflutter, but I did really like the car collection. In the airplane part of the museum they had a terrific section of the art of "barn-storming," which we both really liked. The best thing about the museum today was the price. They were having "Navy Day" there and all entrance fees were waived. In fact, when I mentioned to a young female docent, just as we were leaving, that I was a Naval Air Corp guy myself, I thought she was going to hug me at first, but settled for just shaking my hand.
Once we were back on the road, we chose Route 460 out of Roanoke and by 3:00 p.m. we had arrived in Appomattox Courthouse, at a camp that we already knew about since we stayed here in 2014. Right across the road from us is the Museum of the Confederacy, one of the most excellent museums in the country devoted to the Civil War. We've already seen it, but if YOU should travel to Appomattox, you should reserve some time to drop by there and enjoy. You won't be sorry.
Tomorrow, we will resume our drive to Colonial Williamsburg. The forecast is for rain again -- or maybe "still," but if we can get to Williamsburg tomorrow afternoon, the next day and Friday are supposed to be clear and sunny. We're keeping our fingers crossed.
So, until tomorrow, we wish you Happy Travels!
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