See America 2008

Even if I had remembered to adjust the time zone on my cell phone alarm, and we had jumped into action at 6am EDT, we would not have had enough time to fit Jamestown into the schedule. As it turned out, I jumped up, out of alarm, realizing that my cell phone still thought it was central time - so our hopes of getting out of Charleston by 7:30 were dashed. We didn't get in to Williamsburg until 8pm, anyway.






First, we wound our way out from Charleston up the Kanawha River and the New River, its tributary. We visited the New River Gorge National River at the Canyon Rim Visitor Center. The overlooks at this site provide great views of the New River Gorge Bridge, the longest arch span and the highest vehicular bridge in the Western Hemisphere - an engineer's mecca. The views up the canyon also were quite impressive.

From New River, we crossed some more Appalachian "mountain country", which to this westerner seemed like touring rolling hills and broken woods, but beautiful none the less. I was impressed, as we approached the Virginia state line, of just how pristine the landscape looks today, given the history of resource exploitation all over the East. Hard to tell driving it today.

We next visited the Appomattox Courthouse National Historic Park. We learned much about the last week of the Civil War, and I found myself disgusted with my lack of knowledge. I know more about WW II than about the Civil War, and that seems wrong to me - something to work on. I never realized that the actual surrender took place in a residence near the Courthouse, rather than in the Courthouse itself. We also watched a living history presentation portraying a corporal in the Union Army and his recollections of the war, as he would have recalled it in the months immediately following the surrender. The Ranger in period costume did an outstanding job of distilling his view of the war from start to finish in about a 40-minute talk.

From Appomattox we made for Williamsburg, ignoring earlier plans to visit Jamestown, as it was 4:30pm and we still had 2+ hours of driving ahead and all were hungry. We ate BBQ in Powhatan, VA, at Perrin's BBQ. It was very good que, as they say. Stick with the "Original" sauce if you go there. We are staying at the Williamsburg Marriott, a very nice conference hotel.

Plan for tomorrow: Three words - Water Country USA. Then back to DC for our last day.

Pics Updated.