We took a few days to get there, driving leisurely and stopping overnight two days before reaching our destination. I liked that we weren't rushing and had time each evening to have a nice dinner and John could get a break from driving. We do enjoy sight-seeing along the way.
Our stay in Virginia was the Afton Mountain Bed & Breakfast. This home was built over 170 years ago, and is currently owned by the hosts who live on site. We had an upstairs room, but there were several rooms downstairs open to guests for lounging and catching up with television if you desired. John did go down a few times to find out what the weather was doing, since we were a little nervous about a hurricane that was predicted to come this way. We did end up leaving a day earlier then we had originally planned, just to be sure we weren't going to get caught up in bad weather.
We had some fantastic food while we were here, the first night at the close-by Blue Mountain Brewery. I even had a flight of their beers (most were great, some were weird! Raspberries on Acid was very different!)
Monticello itself was a little smaller then I thought it was going to be, but they've done a good job of keeping it up and making it available to tourists. There is a visitor's center at the base of the hill, and a shuttle to take you up to the main home, which was nice in the very warm weather they were still having there. The focus this year, from everything we heard while we were there, was to apologize for slavery. I really thought we were past that here in the US, but I guess not, or we are regressing. It's most likely the current press to change history, which we all know can't be done. Sigh.
The garden's were fantastic. I imagine every home in those days had their own gardens and had to raise all of their own food. The garden stretches out over 1,000 ft. by 30 foot, with terracing in between and some very permanent gazebos overlooking a fruit orchard below. Currently the gardens are kept by volunteers and master gardeners who are available there for questions.
We had lunch that day at Michilli Tavern at the base of the property - they served lunch in period costume and much like what it would have been back when it was a stagecoach stop. The fare was very southern - fried chicken, blackeyed peas, potatoes, stewed tomatoes mixed with cornbread (way too sweet).
Of course I bought some seeds for next year's garden from their gift shop! Excited to keep these varieties going.
We visited Appomatox the next day and toured the village that hosted the end of the war, where Lee and Grant signed the surrender of the south. They had some of the best docents there who dressed in period clothing and acted out their parts. So enjoyable and educational!
We also did a tour of wineries - lots of fun! Some good wines and some dry wines (haha!) and we packed lots of it in the car to bring home. A thoroughly enjoyable vacation!
Only one of the wineries we visited. I wasn't very good about taking pics that day.
Does anyone know what this tree/bush is? Was on the street downtown near Appomatox where we had lunch at a diner there. Interesting -- and I brought home one of the pods to see if I could get any seeds out of it.
No comments:
Post a Comment