Virginia

The trip started with a Wedding Reception in NJ. On our first day we packed on the miles and arrived in Greensboro NC for the night. A long first day. Over the next two days we drove Route 29 (The Seminole Trail) from the NC border to Charlottesville and Route 15 (Journey Through Hallowed Ground National Scenic Byway) from Charlottesville to Gettysburg then onto Philadelphia along Route 30 before our destination in northwestern NJ.

Along the way we stopped in Danville VA. Home to the elegant Millionaires Row and the Old West End, the Danville Historic District showcases some of the finest Victorian and Edwardian architecture in Virginia. Many of the old mansions built by the tobacco and textile barons of the late 19th century still stand as testimony to the wealth and power of those industries and to the skill and craftsmanship long disappeared from modern building techniques.

Onto Lynchburg for a stop at its city steps that traverse the city’s steep Courthouse Hill. The Monument Terrace commemorates Lynchburg citizens who fought and died in the Civil War, Spanish-American War, World Wars I and II, Korea, Vietnam and the present day. At the base on Church Street stands the iconic doughboy statue. Many other sculptures and markers line the 139 steps and terraces all the way to the top, where the Lynchburg Museum at the Old Court House stands on Court Street.

To finish our day, we visited Monticello. Monticello was the primary plantation of Thomas Jefferson, a Founding Father, author of the Declaration of Independence, and the third president of the United States, who began designing Monticello after inheriting land from his father at age 14. It stands on a mountain top and took almost 40 years to complete. Not without controversy, almost four hundred persons lived in slavery at Monticello over a sixty-year-period.

An early start the following day brought us to Manassas National Battlefield Park the site of not one but two civil war battles. On July 21, 1861, two armies clashed for the first time on the fields overlooking Bull Run. Heavy fighting swept away any notion of a quick war. In August 1862, Union and Confederate armies converged for a second time on the plains of Manassas. The Confederates won a solid victory bringing them to the height of their power.

After a driving tour of the park, we headed to Lancaster PA to view several covered bridges then on to dinner with friends in Philadelphia and finally to NJ for 4 days with friends and family.

While in NJ we visited the state’s most photographed spot – Clifton Grist Mill.

Early start on the 28th and headed to Bristol which is on the border on Tenn. and Virginia. We tried to see a specific park and trail for some exercise and found that our GPS was useless in this area. So we wandered along the border between states and found the cities train station which caught my eye. Moving through Tennessee we stopped at Cumberland Gap and drove the auto route to the gaps top overlooking the valley.

The gap is where the borders of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia converge, a path to new worlds appears. Early native Americans traveled through it along a game trail, before English-speaking settlers, including Daniel Boone, came through in the 1700s to carve out what became known as Wilderness Road. According to many accounts, between 200,000 and 300,000 settlers came through the Gap into Kentucky and beyond from 1775 to 1810.

Moving on we stopped at Cumberland Falls SP – for some much need exercise after driving the twisting and turning RT 90 along the mountains ridge line. Known as the “Niagara of the South,” the 125-foot wide curtain of water is dramatic day or night. But it’s only at night during a full moon that you can see the moonbow. The “moonbow,” also called a white rainbow or lunar rainbow, is formed just like a rainbow—light is refracted in tiny water droplets—and appears for the two or so days, as long as the sky is clear, on either end of the full moon.

Pushing on we enjoyed the back road scenery of Tennessee then for the next two days we cruised through Arkansas and Oklahoma.

Bristol Va.