Shenandoah Valley- Monday, Dec. 29, 2014

 

As we left Washington, Scott tried talking everyone else into stopping at the Jefferson and/or Lincoln memorials, since we had only gone past them, not into them, yesterday.  Julie reminded him that he will be back- possibly in  March with the 8th grade trip, and probably in May for the 25th anniversary of our engagement.  We passed them and drove on to Virginia.

Part of the reason that we took this trip to Virginia was to see about getting a second place.  We think it would be nice to have a vacation home in Virginia that we could use, as well as our families.  As we drove up the Shenandoah Valley (heading south), we passed several trailer parks and stopped at a few of them in the Grottos and Crimora area, near the slopes of the Blue Ridge.  We weren't impressed with what we were seeing.  

We drove on to Waynesboro, only to find ourselves disoriented.  We weren't able to recognize anything at all, and could not even locate where we had lived.  Part of the problem was that we were only there for a year, and we don't think we've been back to Waynesboro since we left Virginia 15 years ago.  Much has changed, but we've forgotten a lot. The only thing we spotted for sure was the laudromat where we used to go to do laundry.  We stopped for lunch at a A&W/Long John Silvers.  Here, with a little help from the internet maps, we remembered our address was on Hamlet, and refreshed our memory on how to get there.  When we drove back through town, one of the first things we saw was Waynesboro High School where Scott did his student teaching.   Then we passed Bethany Lutheran Church where we went for a while.  The downtown started to look more familiar.  We did find our old aparment again, and not much had changed there, really.

We went to Stuarts Draft, where we wanted to look at some new mobile homes, but the dealership had moved to Harrisonburg.  We headed back down the Valley then.  Scott was hoping to find the comic book store in Harrisonburg where he started his weekly habit, but it has either moved or gone out of business.  When we got to the mobile home dealer, we got the keys to show ourselves around the lot. Anna was impressed by these.  She thought the ones that we had seen earlier looked like "hobo huts" but really liked some of the new ones.  At one point she went into a huge walk-in closet and exclaimed, "IT'S BIGGER THAN MY ROOM!" and spun and danced around it shrieking. 

We think we've decided not to get a mobile home.  The used ones seem to be too old, and the new ones cost what a house did.  When we priced mobile homes in Petersburg not long after we were first married, the prices seemed reasonable-- out of our range then, but a tempting alternative to paying rent in an apartment. Now, however, the prices of new mobile homes seem so high, that we don't see what the advantage is of owning one instead of a house.  

We went on to shop in Harrisonburg.  We stopped at a Barnes & Noble where Emma was able to spend her gift cards from Chrsitmas.  She's calls the backseat of our Flex her "home" and she's certainly set up to be comfortable there.  She's got several blankets for wall to wall carpeting, a good sized library now, and food tucked away in corners.  She's stayed in the car for most of the day while we've been looking, but she's got reason to be content there.

We went to Applebee's across from the Harrisonburg mall to meet our old friend Cathy and her husband, Drew.  We knew her from when Scott worked at the bookstores in Staunton, and have sort of kept touch with her through Facebook.  It was the first time we had seen her in probably 12 years, though, and the first time we've met her husband.  We had a lot to talk about and had a good time, even if the booth was a little crowded for the six of us.

We're now at our hotel in Staunton-  the Stonewall Jackson.  It may have seen rougher days, but it is certainly a nice place now.  The girls are down in the swimming pool, currently.