Heading home

Notes from Margo:

Beneath the dripstone icicles of Titania's Veil, as Lynn put it, we heard eerie bassoon notes resounding through a limestone cave about 200 feet below the surface of an Appalachian hill.

For the first major leg of our return trip, we had decided on the Blue Ridge Parkway, a scenic route angling southwest through western Virginia and North Carolina. So, about two hours west of Washington, D.C., the Guppy was shrouded in impenetrable fog at the entrance to the "Skyway," the northernmost section of the Parkway. A cheerful ranger greeted us: It's socked in like this the whole way. Visibility almost nil. Expect no views. And by the way, it's actually a bit dangerous because you won't see the deer until they're crashing through your windshield. So be careful out there!!

Hmmm. We turned around and drove down the hill to the Luray Caverns, the roadside attraction with the biggest, yellowest, brightest billboards. For one adult and one senior, $40. And, of course, it was amazing. It was a bit like snorkeling, because we walked slowly through these huge, dimly lighted, underground caverns with incredible shapes, canyons, stalagtites, stalagmites, columns, drapery in stone. They resemble underwater coral formations. Something about the different tenor of the light also suggested the dreamlike state of snorkeling. On the other hand, the caverns featured the Great Stalacpipe Organ (said to be the world's largest musical instrument!!) Rubber-tipped mallets tap stalagtites for the notes. Nothing like that off-shore in Hawaii. We are suckers for that stuff. And it made up for not getting to see the northern end of the Parkway.

We ended up on the Interstate for a while, and then went back up to the Parkway the next day, when the fog cleared up. We had a lovely day of driving on the ridgetop road. The Parkway was a WPA project, and it shows: rock arches for the roads, fences of hewn logs, picnic areas from the '30s. Taking in the scenery was a bit like flying. On both sides of the road, you look down on tiny little houses, fields and roads in the valleys and hollows.

We both thought the Blue Ridge Parkway was just fine for a day's drive, but we decided to skip the second and third days. So we're back on the Interstate, heading for Nashville. I think we're both feeling the draw of home, although it's still at least 2,600 miles away. We're not avoiding the Interstates. Florida's off our list, and we are heading more west than south. And we're thinking of not going to the Gulf Coast at all. We're wavering now, trying to make decisions about what we want to see, and whom we can visit along the way.

It was hard saying goodbye to Alex Neill and Tibby Speer, our dear friends and Lynn's former students in Washington, D.C. But if we had stayed any longer, they were going to have to adopt us – and commit to taking us on-leash twice a day for walks, with their dogs Scout and Candy.

We had arrived in Washington with the expectation of staying for three or four days, visiting Alex and Tibby (that's them below, at home in Georgetown) and seeing the sights while they went to work. Tibby is in charge of the merchandise at the gift shop in the Capitol Visitors' Center; Alex is a senior editor with Gannett's chain of military newspapers.

We stayed for eight days.

In addition to standard-issue sight-seeing, we played tourist at the District of Columbia’s Kaiser system. Lynn was tentatively diagnosed with pneumonia, which called for a powerful, non-generic antibiotic (co-pay was $130, and well worth the price). His former-smoker’s cough, which he’s had for at least 30 years, had gotten progressively worse over a few days, and he had an off-and-on-again low-grade fever. His energy level was also very low.

So Lynn rested as I went out on a dream-come-true sweep of the Smithsonian's collections – the National Museum of American Art, the Portrait Gallery, the Hirshhorn, the African Art Museum, the Freer Gallery. We couldn't have been luckier. He was warm and comfortable with a nice big cable TV in the basement rooms that Tibby and Alex have set up as guest quarters in their 1810-era brick townhouse in Georgetown.

When it became clear that rest wasn't enough, we went to the North Capitol Kaiser Permanente clinic. It was a bit odd for white tourists like us, because almost everyone was black – from most of the clientele to the parking garage attendants to the pharmacists and x-ray technicians. But no one seemed to mind the white tourists who seemed to have lost their way – they acted like it was an everyday thing. And maybe it is. Dr. Cesar Torres listened to Lynn's chest and decided on pneumonia. He called back later, having seen the chest x-ray, and sounded less certain. But the proof, as they say, is in the pudding. And the mucous pudding in Lynn's lungs cleared up within a day or two with the antibiotic.

We took a trip to Mount Vernon as a test outing to see if Lynn was up to traveling again. And what a beautiful place that is, with a view out over the Potomac River. It's been restored to its conditon in 1799, when George Washington died. It was a big-production farm in its day, with about 400 workers raising wheat, corn and other crops. About 300 of the workers were slaves.

Aside from field labor, workers seem to have been assigned to little outbuildings: smoke house, laundry house, kitchen (separate from the main house), spinning cabin, weaving cabin, stables, carriage houses, a composting structure, salting room, greenhouse, and so forth. The restoration is so complete that even the "necessaries" (outhouses) are on display. (That's one at right, with Lynn.) A gazillion schoolkids come through every day. If I were marketing bumper stickers, I'd print up a batch: "George Washington pooped here."

Mileage from Washington, D.C. to Verona, Virgina: 152

Mileage so far: 7,702