Happy Halloween This and That

Well, because I know everyone wants to know what I've been doing, (😁) I'll tell you. Nothing much. But that's not going to stop me from sharing.

Today was a day off from work because of an eye appointment. Unlike most of these appointments, this one didn't take hours and hours. I was back home in fewer than three hours—a record, maybe, and a welcome surprise.

We've been having unseasonably warm weather, so we expect more trick-or-treaters than some years. However, we usually don't get more than thirty. We bought candy last night. I didn't want to buy it too early because of the temptation. If it was in the house, I would have just one piece, then another, and end up needing to buy more. Sometimes, the best way to have willpower is not to have temptation. :)

On the way to buy the candy, I turned in my early voting ballot at one of the ballot boxes. I don't know what will happen on Tuesday and beyond, but I've had my say. It's going to be interesting. 

Last weekend, Ward and I took a morning visit to Washington Monument State Park. The park is named after the stone monument on top of South Mountain. It was the first one completed that was dedicated to George Washington, and it was built in 1827. Another one was built in Baltimore two years later, and the iconic obelisk one located on the National Mall was finished in 1885.

Normally, you can go up into the monument,
but it was closed last weekend because of migrating birds.

The trip was a good way to start the morning. The sun was shining, and the leaves were beautiful. However, we were not the only ones out and about visiting the monument; we ran into a big birthday party, Appalachian Trail hikers, and a very active pack of Cub Scouts. Watching the scouts' random motion did NOT make us yearn for the days when Wally and Theo were those ages. After a short hike, we headed back home.

We drove through Boonsboro on our way home and saw various "creatures" lining the streets. The dozens of figures lent a fun, festive feel to the town. Some were silly, some were scary, and they were made by various local civic groups and businesses.

The doorbell is starting to ring with trick-or-treaters, so I better go.

Until next time...

Thankful Sunday

For the beauty of the earth, 

For the glory of the skies,

For the love which from our birth

Over and around us lies—

For the wonder of each hour,

Of the day and of the night,

Hill and vale, and tree and flow’r,

Sun and moon, and stars of light—

Lord of all, to Thee we raise,

This our hymn of grateful praise.*

I am thankful for the colors of autumn.

*From the hymn, "For the Beauty of the Earth" by Folliott S. Pierpiont

The Leaves They Are a Changin'

View out our kitchen window

 The leaves are close to peak color now, and it reminds me of my favorite autumn post about a fall morning I spent with my friend Sarah. I first told this story in 2012 and rerun it every few years. I think it's time to share it again.

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The Present is the Present

I am lucky that I get to spend some Sunday mornings with my friend, Sarah, a special needs teenager. I buddy with her during Sunday School as we visit different programs she enjoys. You need to know two things about Sarah (other than how sweet she is): she loves nature and can be quite determined.

She exhibited these two traits one day last fall as we walked from one building to another on the church campus to go to a singing activity. I was trying to hurry her along, only half listening as she showed me a bug or a leaf that she found interesting along our path. When we were almost to our destination, she said she was not going any further and sat down under a maple tree. After a brief moment of frustration, I stopped and remembered that there was no agenda for the morning except for Sarah and me to enjoy ourselves. It was okay if we skipped singing this time.

Sarah then told me to come and that we were going to play a game to see if the falling leaves would touch us as they fell from the tree. We sat still, felt the warm morning air, and watched the leaves float around us in a gentle breeze. Up until this point, I hadn't even noticed what a beautiful morning it was.

You have probably heard the saying, "The present is the present." Never has this been more evident than it was that morning with Sarah.

(In case anyone is wondering who won the game—she did. Sarah had a total of three leaves fall on her, and I had one.

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Until next time...

Hello, again

 Time has been flying since we got home from our trip to WV. I haven't posted since then, so I think it's time for some speed blogging, otherwise known as stream-of-conscious blogging. Also scattered throughout are pictures of what's blooming in the yard. 

If I've been doing anything with blogging, I have been working on a private blog about our trip. That way, I can add pictures where you can actually see people's faces. I'm also adding a few more photos than I did here where I was trying to summarize and not show you too many pictures. Adding pictures has been tedious because I collected them from three different places. And, of course, Blogger wasn't always cooperating. I finished with this chore yesterday. The posts are not necessarily pretty, but they will be good for recalling our trip.

Today, I went to the movies, and I think I must have broken some kind of personal record. Ward and I went to one in the summer, so that's 2 movies for me in just a few months. It was Miss Landers' birthday, so Aunt Martha and I took her to see Death Becomes Her. It's a cult classic from 1992 and stars Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn, and Bruce Willis. It's a dark comedy among the other Halloween-type movies the theater was playing. This is the same theater that I went to in the summer, where I was freezing the entire film. Today, I found out that you can turn on heat for the seats as well as recline them. Live and Learn. The tickets were only $5, so we may actually go again. Maybe the third time will be the charm, and I will fully understand how my seat works. 

This weekend, I've been working on cleaning up our garden. I harvested the last of the lettuce and tomatoes and have been cleaning up the dead plants and weeds. I plan to cover it with black plastic this year, as the Farmer's Almanac recommended. Hopefully, that will cut back on some of the weeds in the spring.

Speaking of plants, we had our first frost this past week. Most things survived, but some did not. We're having a warm-up now, so I think we will have to keep mowing the grass. It's so happy this time of year with the lower temperatures and more rain.

I just finished reading The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown. The non-fiction book came out in 2013, and I'm a little late to the party to read it. In case you aren't familiar with the story, the book chronicles the rowing team from the University of Washington and their quest for the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. The book is intense but excellent. They later made a movie about it, but I haven't seen it. From what I read, the book is a richer experience with more background about the people. But, rarely can a movie include everything a book does.

Well, there goes my timer reminding me that it's time to fix dinner. We're having shepherd's pie from the freezer and a salad. 

Until next time...

WV Trip, Day 6, Hawks and Crafts

Ward, Wally, Theo, and I are on a week's vacation in southern West Virginia. If you're interested, here's what we did on the previous days. Day One, Day Two, Day Three, Day Four. Day Five

On Monday, we headed north to Hawks Nest State Park, located near Anstead in Fayette County, WV. There, we got another look at the New River Gorge. 

The park has several parts, and we went first to the lodge. Behind the lodge, there was a short walk to an overlook.

This is one of the views from the overlook. You see the dam on the New River here that forms a 250-acre recreational lake.

As part of the lake project, a tunnel was dug through sandstone under Gauley Mountain to divert the New River's flow around the lake. This is so the river could be used for hydroelectric power. The silica dust inhaled by the workers caused a lung disease that killed most of them.

Then, we drove about a mile down the road for another overlook. Notice the bridge.

Here is a closer look at the same bridge. We drove down to the marina on a narrow, twisty dirt road with a steep drop-off on one side and massive rocks on the other. Now, I really felt like I was home in WV. 😀

From there, we hiked a rail trail that was an old spur line used
to transport coal from the mines to the main tracks. 

We took a spur off the main trail to find the entrance to the old Mill Creek Mine.
Theo is checking out what you can see inside - not much except a tunnel.

After the hike, we went back to the lodge for lunch. The food and the view
were great as we looked out over the gorge and mountains as we ate.

Then we headed south, back to Beckley, to visit Tamarack. Tamarack is a marketplace for West Virginia artisans. It is a circular building with pointed windows around the top, and the points represent a quilt piece.* Everything in here was juried and made in WV. (My mother once had her book sold in here.)

I was drawn to the quilts we saw.

Ward was interested in the woodworking products.
This is a fully-functioning chain saw made entirely out of wood!

Wally found stringed instruments made with kitchen things.
That's a cake pan, you see.

We all thought the freeze-dried products Theo found interesting.
That's a piece of freeze-dried Little Caesar's Pizza you see.

These flowers were made by someone who used to be our paperboy.

Then we ate Mexican for dinner, and soon enough, we were back to the Vrbo to pack and clean up. We left Tuesday morning for our ~7 hour trip home. We listened to Going Postal by Terry Pratchett, which made our uneventful drive home enjoyable. Today, we are regrouping and thinking about where our next trip will be. 

Until next time...

* I thought I heard or read that the peaks represent quilt pieces, but I can't seem to find that info now. So, I'm not sure about the design. 

WV Trip, Day 5, The Cold War

Ward, Wally, Theo, and I are vacationing for a week in West Virginia. If you want to catch up with our other days, here are links. Day One, Day Two, Day Three, Day Four.

Today, Sunday was the fifth day of vacation, and we were suffering from vacation fatigue. Thus, we cut back our planned activities for the day. After a slow start to the morning, we spent the afternoon in White Sulfur Springs, WV. White Sulfur Springs is a small town in Greenbrier County, WV, and home to the world famous resort, The Greenbrier. 

The Greenbrier

We didn't go to visit the Greenbrier, per say, but what's under it. The Bunker. The Bunker was a fallout shelter for Congress to be used in the case of a nuclear attack. It was completed in 1962, during the height of the Cold War with Russia, and was the idea of President Eisenhower. Eisenhower thought it was close enough to Washington, DC, that it could be reached quickly in an emergency by car, train, or plane, but isolated enough in the WV mountains that it wouldn't get a direct attack. Thus he approached C&O Railroad, owners of the Greenbrier, with a deal that the government would build the hotel a new wing if they could build the bunker under it. By having new hotel construction, no one would be suspicious that they were building a secret hideaway underneath the mountain. 

The shelter could hold 600 people (Congress and support staff) for 30-40 days. It was totally self-contained including power sources, water, food, a hospital, decontamination chambers, and meeting rooms for the Senate and House of Delegates. The planners seemed to have thought of everything including riot gear in case problems broke out with that many stressed people living underground in close quarters.

Bunk beds in 1 of 18 dormitories in the complex.

This is one of the 25-ton blast doors protecting the facility.

The secret bunker became public knowledge in 1992 after an article in the Washington Post exposed it and suggested that it was no longer necessary since the Cold War was over.  It was decommissioned over the next couple of years and today it is used for cloud data storage. Luckily, it never got tested to see how well it would have worked.

The tour lasted about 1 1/2 hours and was excellent. Jonathan, our tour guide, was knowledgeable and had the logistics of maneuvering a group of people through the bunker down to a science. We were not allowed any electronics on the tour, so the bunker pictures you see here are from postcards they gave us at the end. 

Even though, Ward and I had gone on the tour years ago, we all found it very interesting. We realized that Jonathan was right when he said that even though the Cold War was an important part of history, there aren't many actual places that you could visit that were directly connected to it. The Bunker was one of those.

We explored The Greenbrier and were properly impressed before heading back to the Vrbo for some reading, game playing, and puzzle working. 

We have a plan for tomorrow, our last day before heading home, but we are flexible, so we'll see what we end up doing.

Until next time...

WV Vacation, Day 4 - A Railroad Town and Rushing Waters.

 Ward, Wally, Theo, and I are vacationing for a week in southern West Virginia.In case your interested, here's what we've done so far. Day One, Day Two, Day Three

Our trip so far has been a good one as we enjoy the good weather and beautiful scenery along with some historical places. Today was no exception. I'll see what I can do to tell you about it, but golly, these blog posts are difficult to write - at least with the lack of motivation and energy I have at the end of the day. 

But if I don't, I think I will forget much of what we did. At dinner tonight, I had already forgotten what we had done that morning. (BTW, the carnivores of the family were very happy with dinner because we went to the Texas Roadhouse Steak House. I had a baked potato.) 

I have a feeling when I get home with my familiar devices, these vacation posts will get some editing. Until then, I'm going to give today, Saturday, a go. It's going to be one of my stream of consciousness posts.

Thurmond Depot

We spent the morning in the town of Thurmond. Thurmond is an incorporated town in Fayette County, WV. Current population is 3, with the county government consisting of 1 mayor and 2 city councilmen. 

The bridge over the New River into Thurmond. It has both train tracks and one lane for cars to cross. There was a 5K race going on, so everyone had to do some careful maneuvering to stay out of each others way.

At one time the town was thriving as a railroad town for the coal that was being mined in the area and shipped around the country. Coal fired engines were also refueled and serviced there.  It was so much of a railroad town that it didn't have a main street. The 2 hotels, bank, train depot, etc., were right along the railroad tracks. It was said that skilled visitors at the hotel could spit tobacco onto a passing train from the balcony. They were that close to the tracks. All of that part of town is abandoned now along with most of the houses that were built on the hill above the tracks. 

Because the buildings were so close to the tracks and we weren't allowed on them, I didn't get any further away perspectives on the old buildings.

Thurmond became a ghost town after both the coal demand of the area dried up and the advent of diesel trains which didn't need the coal refueling services in the town. However, trains still run on the tracks and diesel trains carrying coal still go through the area. Amtrak also makes regular stops here. 

Today, Thurmond is part of the New River National Park and they have a ranger station set up in the old depot.

After walking down the commercial district along the RR tracks, we climbed the hill to see other houses in the town. Most of them were abandoned and nature was trying to reclaim them. However, we did see a couple of houses where people lived currently.

Speaking of nature, I spotted this morning glory on our walk and it was calling to have its picture taken. I obliged because you know how much I like a flower picture.

And the only thing I like more than a picture of a flower is a picture of a flower with a bee on it. So our tour of Thurmond was a nature walk, of sorts. But I digress. Back to the events of the day. :)

After our visit to Thurmond, we went to the Sandstone Falls Visitor Center in the southern part of the New River Park. The center is relatively new and focuses on the watershed of the New River and best practices for it. Theo said it was his favorite visitor center, so far. Kris recommended it us as she visited it with her family a couple of years ago. Unfortunately, as I was wandering around outside, I was "attacked" by a plant that left hundreds of burs on me. It took a while to pick them all off. Nature sure has it's persistent ways. 

Brooks Overlook

Then we were off to see the falls. We had several scenic stops along the way before we made it to the town of Hinton where there was a bridge to cross over the New River. Then we followed along the river for several miles until we reached Sandstone Falls. 

Brooks Falls. Ward and Wally, up close and personal with the New River.

We have been seeing a lot of views of the New River from high vantage points. This was the first time we were up close and personal with the river. Because of Helene, the river was up and quite muddy. This area did not receive excessive rains like North Carolina, but the New River has its origins in NC. So whatever happens there, takes about three days to reach the New River Gorge. BTW, the New River is one of the few rivers that flows north in the East.

The rushing waters were quite LOUD. (I couldn't get my video with the loud river to load.)

Sandstone Falls. A couple of weeks ago, before the rainfall from Helene, these falls only had trickles of water going over them.

Another view of Sandstone Falls a little further down stream. The rocks the water was falling over were not visible because of the amount of water in the river now.

We ended our time around the Falls with a short hike on the Island Loop Trail.

So there you have it. My end of the day brain dump. Time for bed.

Until next time...