Thursday 1st – Saturday 18th
September – the USA…..
6.30am…..it’s
time to head for the US!! Trundling with
our bags past the once again closed shops on Sloane St, we took the underground
from Knightsbridge to Heathrow…45 minutes and you’re there - excellent – why
doesn’t Melbourne have an airport / rail link like this???? This is the 3rd leg on our round
the world ticket which we commenced in mid-January, so once again there was a
lot of wonderful reflection on all that we’ve done thus far…..such a journey! Unlike Europe, our short time in the USA is
going to be all about old friends and catching up.
It
was another uneventful flight. We
arrived at Dulles, Washington DC and were met by Mary Joan who magically wove
her way through the myriad of motorway routes to their home in Maryland. There was not much sign of Hurricane Irene
which had stormed through a few days ago…just fallen trees and branches luckily. We believe it was the people of Vermont who’d
copped the worst with much Brisbane-like flooding. Once again it was hi to David and Justin,
then the next day we all set off for “them thar hills”! On the way to their cabin in West Virginia we
stopped by the start to the Appalachian trail…a peaceful place near the Potomac
river, where in 1864, during the American Civil War, there were 23,000 casualties
in this very spot! We saw the monument
dedicated to the battle and Dave showed us, amongst a long list of
Correspondent Names, a reference to Henry M. Stanley – the very same Stanley
who later travelled in search of Livingstone in Africa, the same bloke who’d
fought (for both sides) during the Civil War, the same guy who was portrayed by
many (completely wrongly) as the despot of the Belgian Congo…another
fascinating piece of history!
Now
time to get back to the cabin – it’s in a magical spot just above the popular spa
town of Berkeley Springs, nestled in amongst the trees where many birds are
encouraged to feed and the black bears come if they smell the salmon you’ve
cooked on the BBQ. Then there’s the nearby
river in which you can wallow and float downstream on rubber tyres…what with a
few good books, loads of food and good company it’s an idyllic spot to unwind
for a few days.
From
DC we headed south to Lynchburg for a few days’ catch up with old friends,
Phebe and Bill (Phebe had been an exchange student with Jim’s parents back in
1973! …does that tell you how old?) The bush trail in downtown Lynchburg was
great. The trail starts at the Awareness
Garden, a peaceful place where families and friends of those with cancer can
dedicate a seat, or fountain or pavers so you can sit and reflect next to the
quiet of the bush, then you can trek or jog or cycle for miles. Our time with them was lots of fun including
a visit to their condo at Wintergreen, a lovely ski-resort in the Blue Ridge
Mountains.
On
the way down we called in on the Washingtons…yes, George and Martha who are
still to be found, somewhat posthumously, entombed in a vault at their farm
Mount Vernon just south of the Capital.
They’re surrounded by a less salubrious burial ground for about 150
slaves – men, women and kids, all in now-unmarked graves, who died during their
tenure with the Washington family.
Strange to remember that at the time of the War of Independence, and
indeed for the next “four score years and ten”, slavery was normality, even in
the “north”.
From
there we flew to Seattle for a few days catch up with old friends, Barbara and
Bill (Jim had imposed on their family endlessly during his year in Snohomish in
1971-1972! …does that tell you how
old?). It’s an eerie feeling being back
in the old town again, where Jim was before the world of work, after having
finished with the world of work.
Most
of our stay was spent talking, or catching up as the yanks put it. We are so lucky to have the opportunity to
spend “quality time” with Bill (89) and Barbara (86) and we all had plenty to
laugh about. In Seattle we took a trip to the Pike St Market to see the famous flying salmon and the original Starbucks (c1971) opposite the market is still going strong.
Just
to make our birdwatching mates green with envy….one evening they took us to
Monroe, close by, to see the annual nesting of the Vaux Swifts, tiny migrating
birds “nesting” in the elementary school chimney on their way from Alaska down
to Central America for their summer holidays…smart birds! It’s not really nesting though; they spend
the night clinging to the brick walls of the chimney interior…thousands of
them…before checking out the next morning, headed for the next chimney Hilton,
in Oregon. You’d want a discount to stay
down the bottom of the wall I reckon, with that lot above you!
A
word here about one of the major challenges of our trip – no, not computer
technology, not phone sim cards, not banking, not car navigators….it’s been
taps!! …bath taps, shower taps, kitchen
taps, laundry taps….just trying to come to terms with the multitude of
different designs and ways of operating taps throughout Africa, Europe and the
USA is enough to send you round the twist!!
In fact our next book is going to be “A Dummies Guide to Operating Taps”
– should sell millions.
We
left the Bates family with a promise to return (with the swifts…) next May for
Bill’s 90th birthday celebrations!
We flew back to Washington DC for the last few days at the cabin in West
Virginia…and some birthday festivities (Mary’s 50th and Jim’s 58th)…before
heading home, bringing this long wonderful adventure to an end.
Jim
and Mary treated themselves to a spa and massage on the big day, coming home
with Jim’s favourite present – a T-shirt which says ‘Paddle faster, I can hear
banjos’ – they had to negotiate, like Lara Croft, a web of invisible light
beams to enter the cabin and much giggling ensued as they tried to lift legs,
twist torsos and curve spines through the web.
Dinner was a gem of a curry a la Dave, followed by a choccie log a la Janet…yum. The trouble with so many candles, though, is
that it’s hard to blow them out before the inferno melts the cake!!
