Visit with cousin Patrick

We visited our cousin Patrick in Baywood, Virginia. It was a two-hour drive from Roanoke. Here is Patrick with his book of family history that he is working on. Patrick made us a wonderful lunch of chicken, potatoes, green beans, and salad. All except the chicken came from his garden.
He took us all around the area where my great grandmother was born. He took us to the family cemeteries where some of our ancestors are buried. He gave us a tour of the area. It's very rural, in some ways like it was 100 years ago. He showed us their family cabin that they built themselves out of recycled materials.

It looks pretty cozy on the inside. Here is Becca and Patrick's friend, Wayne.
Here is the river down the hill from the cabin. The river is a tributary of the New River.

US 340 Through Virginia Briefly

Here is a map showing U.S. 340's dip into Virginia. By the scientific method of holding my finger against the screen, I estimate it goes about 3000 feet from Maryland to West Virginia,

Roanoke

We drove all afternoon to get to Roanoke. The satnav took us down US 340 for a couple of hours before it finally put us on Interstate 81. My favorite part of that was when US 340 crosses the Potomac out of Maryland, there is a sign welcoming you to Virginia, followed by what seems a few hundred yards later by a sign welcoming you to West Virginia. Here is the view from the hotel:

Gettysburg

Friday, we drove to Gettysburg National Military Park. The park covers a large area and is crossed by normal public roads. Portions of the battle area are private property still. I took a lot of photographs, but I won't post all of them here, just a few. The visitor center has a small museum.
We bought a CD that narrated the auto tour of the park. It runs through the battle in chronological order. We had trouble at first finding the beginning but eventually we got headed in the right direction. The area has a zillion markers and memorials. You can see a few in this shot, along with the auto tour marker. The scope of the battle was much, much larger than Manassas. The drive goes along the artillery line for a mile and a half at one point. We learned from the audio commentary that the town is called (at least by that narrator) "Geh tiss burg", not "get teez burg".

This is the largest of the memorials. There is a stairway to the top, but we were tired from the observation tower and didn't go up.

To Gettysburg

Looks like a good morning for our drive to Gettysburg and then on to Roanoke.

Valley Forge

We went to Valley Forge to see the historic stuff. Here is a nice memorial arch.


Some other memorials.

They seem to like recreating the cabins the soldiers lived in. There are cabins all over the park.
A statue of Anthony Wayne.
We stopped at the house that Washington used as his headquarters during the encampment.
Here is how they have the inside laid out.

Manhole Covers

They make fun of me for photographing these, so here are some more:

Rutgers

This morning, we visited Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, because Becca wants to go to school there. Nobody knows why. The campus is pretty and the surrounding area is nice enough. Nothing like Camden. I guess we can cross the Camden campus of Rutgers off the list. Here are some pictures. First the Livingston Campus. There are several disjoint campuses in New Brunswick. The College Avenue one appears to be the original one. Many of the buildings appear to have started as private houses. The school doesn't necessarily own them contiguously so there may be fraternity houses, etc., mixed in with school facilities. The Livingston and Busch campuses are across the Raritan river and seem to be newer creations on large plots of land. We didn't check out the Cook/Douglass campus.



The College Avenue campus.



This building is actually a gymnasium.

Wild Time in the Eastern Time Zone

Yep, lots of wild life back here.




And some not so wild.

Severe Weather

The thunderstorm I mentioned yesterday moved into our area about midnight. I could hear heavy rain and a lot of thunder. We fell asleep anyway. Here's a weather site. He says:

Rain is ending from west to east this morning in the region and it looks like most of the rain should be off of the coast by noon or shortly after. Sunshine has started to break out in the western burbs this morning and we should see some sunshine breaking out in the city in the next couple of hours, with a pretty decent afternoon shaping up. Temperatures should get into the very low 80's by day's end in Philadelphia, slightly higher than my original forecast, but that's because the rain ended earlier than thought.

BB 62

After we saw the battleship from the duck tour, Becca wanted to tour it, so we did. We had to drive through Camden, New Jersey, which looked unappetizing and even the County building has no windows. After, I found out that Camden is one of the most dangerous towns in the country. Here is the New Jersey.
One the pier.
Posing in front of the big guns.
Enlisted mens quarters. These are cushy compared to the World War II era fittings when the ship carried twice as many hands as it did later.
Inside the gun turret.
Becca in the turret.
Looking through the periscope at the Ben Franklin Bridge.
Looking into another compartment in the turret.
Cruise missile launcher.
This is not a hall of mirrors.
The barber shop.
Becca in the brig.
The ship laundry.
Geedunk means candy and nuts on the ship, for some reason.