November 28-30
Joanna and I have embarked on a dream trip. Well, a dream of mine, anyway.
We’re taking three weeks to tour our way to Phoenix and take in some of the sights along the way.
If the weather is mild—no heavy snow or sleet— we’ll follow Interstate 40 most of the way. The western part of I-40 runs with old U.S. 66.
We’ll rest in Phoenix for a while and then go somewhere else. Maybe California.
We have no firm idea of when we will return to New Jersey. Maybe not until early March.
The plan so far is to push through familiar territory and then slow down.
We left Montclair on Nov. 28 and went back to Chambersburg, Pa. We spent a couple of days in the same place, a Comfort Inn, last fall, when we went to Gettysburg.
But before we got there, though, I managed to get lost in Winchester, Va. I felt fulfilled by the experience.
We noticed a sign on the highway about George Washington’s office and Stonewall Jackson’s headquarters.
This is part of my extended neighborhood. I have no idea how many times I have passed Winchester in the past 40 years or so, and I never noticed that sign before.
Here was more Stonewall trivia that I haven’t seen yet. Taking the exit was a given. We saw another, smaller sign in town. We passed Washington’s office. The sign outside called it his “out-lot.”
I didn’t stop there, though. I was back on a Stonewall Jackson quest. Another chance to feel closer to my favorite traitor.
Needless to say, the signs petered out. We tried to follow one that pointed to a visitor information center. Even with Joanna on the lookout, we never found that.
I took a road that led out of town and remembered that even if it didn’t lead to an I-81 on-ramp, all I needed was to find U.S. 11 South, which would lead eventually to a junction with the Interstate highway. They run pretty much parallel and sometimes congruently from Canada to the end of 81 in Tennessee.
The only problem was that it was taking a long time on this unnamed, unnumbered road to reach anything I recognized.
Joanna saw a Postal Service truck idling by the side of the road. We stopped and asked the letter-carrier for directions.
This trail-blazer was heading in the wrong direction. I-81 was west of us.
She sent us to the end of the road, about a mile farther on, where we turned left on U.S. 340 for a short ride to Berryville and Virginia 7 west, which took us to the Interstate.
Just in time, too. That unidentified road was charming but the ride was starting to get old.
We got to John’s house a little after four. Kim met us at the door and John came home from work a little after five.
One of their serious hobbies is wine. John showed us his wine cellar, a wall of built-in slots each holding a bottle. Maybe a couple of hundred bottles, maybe ten thousand. I’m only guessing. I didn’t count.
The lineup of bottles with dinner was terrific.
We had noshes to start, cheese, bread, salami, and more. We had that with a couple of whites. One was a California Chardonnay that John said tasted “buttery.” I never would have sorted that out, but when he said it, my brain agreed. “Wow, yes, butter.”
There was also a Burgundy white that was very different from the California wine and also very good.
Then came a red called Burnt Sacrifice, a blend made by a California winemaker named Finney. It was a complicated mix of flavors. None buttery, but still very good. The label didn’t say what grapes Finney used.
Part, or maybe all, of the proceeds from the sale of Burnt Sacrifice go to help revive the wineries that suffered in the recent plague of wildfires.
We had that with an oyster stew, made with a broth that had simmered a good part of the day. The main course was a succulent pot roast slow-cooked in a tajine.
We spent the rest of the evening swapping family stories, many of them about our grandfather, who was a legendary poacher in South Jersey and an even more legendary spinner of tall tales.
John and I also share a great-grandfather who was literally run out of Finland late in the 19th century. The story told in the family was that he angered the authorities for criticizing the Czar for reopening taverns
His memoirs were discovered and translated a few decades ago. Turns out, Jacob supported a progressive socialist party that, in addition to temperance, proposed a number of policies that were definitely anti-czarist.
The photo of the day is a Joanna's shot of a bit of southswestern Virginia near John and Kim's house.
Tuesday, the 30th, we came to the edge of familiar territory. We stayed just north of Sevierville in Kodak, Tenn. Sevierville is the entryway into that over-the-top corridor that includes the Smoky Mountain Knife Works, the vacation Valhalla that has grown up around Dollywood, and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
We didn’t take that road this trip. But I did see that the Hatfield & McCoy Dinner Show had a holiday theme—the Hatfield-McCoy Christmas Dinner Feud.
Interstate 81 passes through some of the most spectacular country. It follows the Blue Ridge before it meets Interstate 40.
Anyhow, after Kodak, our next steps are into the unknown—well, unknown to us.
Be well all, I’ll keep you posted.
Harry
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