shenandoahandback2021 - Tumblr blog

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We didn't get very far on the 19th. That was OK because we only had to drive to Raleigh the next morning, about 50 miles. We dropped anchor at the state fairground RV park for the night. I contacted my friends who live just North of Raleigh where I used to have some property and they wanted to see us the next day for a visit.

Sep 20

 We drove to my old, first house in Cary, NC to look around and boy is it different. You can hardly tell it was a single-family house.  There are so many trees in the front yard and side yards that you can hardly see the house. It has really changed but that's what happens after 40 plus years. We found an authentic German bakery downtown and got some really good German bread.

Sep 21

We managed to find a parking space near the campus of NC State and took a walk over to look at some of my old haunts. Some of them were gone, but found my freshman dorm.  I couldn't tell where my window was on the 3rd floor, but I took a picture of the area anyway. We went to the Student Union and I presented my lifetime membership card to a young lady at the information booth. She was impressed and surprised but said there was nothing going on that I could use the card for. I wanted to shoot some pool, but apparently, they don't shoot pool at college anymore because there was no poolroom.  It was shocking to see some of the changes. The green area between my dorm and the one beside it was grown up with trees and landscaping. We used to call it the Owen/Tucker beach where everybody went to sun bathe and hang out. No more.   We got some curious looks but no one ask us what we (two old folks) we're doing when we were looking around the area.   We drove back to the area we had been earlier yesterday and found a state park to spend the night near our friend's house. It was really closer than I thought, only 3.6 miles away. We thought we we're just going to have just coffee time so we waited to almost 3 o'clock to call them. They said please come on we've been waiting for you. They have a fantastic house in a subdivision with only about 15 houses that they built by Skype 15 years ago while they were living in Germany and it is beautiful. They had some kind of good builder who worked well with them long distance. Rudy and Patty are so talented it makes me kind of feel bad that I can't do much artistically. Rudy was a master porcelain painter and designer in Germany before coming to America. Now he paints porcelain, in oils, pastels and water colors. Patty does mostly pastels and water colors. They showed us some of their work and it is fantastic. Rudy is having a show in Raleigh this weekend. He was a designer at Lennox in Philadelphia and he designed the is the famous white on white China that Lennox is famous for. Many times, when he goes to a show or an antique place and looks at some China, the people start telling him about it and he says I know I designed that. There are super good friends as well. They learned a little bit about HOAs from us because they had had some small difficulties all with other neighbors but not affecting them. They didn’t realize that the governing documents overrode their bill of rights, because they agreed to that provision when they bought their land.   22nd- 25 AM    We drove the short drive to Winston-Salem to visit our friend Billie and her boyfriend. It was a great visit from the start and a relative of her late husband and a friend of ours came down for a few hours who I knew from growing up in the mountains. Everything was going very well and we were thinking about having something for dinner when Billy stood up and almost collapsed. She was in really bad pain and we tried to do something with heat and so forth but she knew it was a kidney stone. She eventually had to go to the emergency room and didn't get home till after midnight. The next 2 days we just hung around the house while Billie took care of herself because she was very weak and in a lot of pain that was managed somewhat with drugs. We all 3 took care of what she needed and her daughter came over yesterday for a belated birthday party of hot dogs with 4 of Billie’s grandchildren.  We had a good time seeing her daughter and grandkids from her son and daughter-in-law and her daughter’s daughter and son.  Her son and daughter-in-law were celebrating their honeymoon in Asheville.   Sep25    We headed for the mountains and had dinner with 2 to my classmates at a local restaurant before we head to Morganton, North Carolina tomorrow to visit with my younger sister. We may get a chance to visit with my older sister and brother-in-law before we head home on Monday.    I have a couple of pictures to upload, but this may be the last post for this trip.  

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My Old house

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My old house. Looks like a “shanty” town house. Too bad, it was really nice when we lived there. No HOA!!

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Top 2 rows - My old dorm and the Owen/Tucker-Hall-beach-My-wifi-is-too-weak-to-support-my-keyboard-more-later

3rd row - Used to be a restaurant I ate most of my dinners in freshman year. I could get a hamburger with lettuce and tomato, fries and a chocolate milk for $0.57.  I told my mom I was having a meat with potatoes and two vegetables and milk.

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We are in Winston-Salem visiting our friend. Will post some details of the last 4 days soon

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Sep 17,   We had a very restful night. We had so many choices for a seafood dinner for lunch it took a while to make a decision. We decided to go to the one that had some Greek influence. We ordered the seafood platter to share and it was enough for us and enough for another meal later. The waitress was a hoot. We enjoyed her conversation. Everything ended with an “amen” from her.  I asked for a draft beer and she said “honey we don't have any draft beer anymore”. I said it's on the menu and she said there's a lot of things on that menu that aren't here anymore. She said she had three canned beers, all lite and I said I really wanted a draft. She said “I’ll pour it for you honey”. We just stuck with water, The owner was actually from Greece and I asked her to have him come over and talk to us. He was an interesting character and was glad to know we had traveled to his home country and probably visited his hometown because of the route we drove around the peninsula. I won't go into details but to say the least he’s not happy with all the immigrants coming to Greece. As you know already, I updated the blog that afternoon and we just chilled.   Sep 18    We called a friend of ours that lives a couple of hours away and they said please come by and visit is it. I knew the husband in 1966 when we lived in the same rooming house when I was in college. Unfortunately, Bill has had some health problems in the last few years, 2 strokes and a heart attack that resulted in some bypasses. He's alert and able to get around but his speech has been affected. I told stories about some things we did in Raleigh and he shook his head and pointed and said yep that's right. His wife Brenda is just the salt of the Earth. On the way to Elizabeth City the day before, a couple we had interacted with at the New River Gorge National Park informed us that they had tested positive for covid the previous Thursday. They had been to a wedding in Cincinnati and probably were infected there. Since we had seen them on the 6th of September, we had to go into a semi-isolation mode which is not hard to do in a campground.  On the way to our friend’s house in Goldsboro, we stopped at a very old town on the Albemarle sound called Edenton. It was a very interesting town. We saw some old buildings and just walked around.  It’s very nice town. When we got to our friend's house, we immediately informed them of that condition and said we understand if we could not stay. Brenda of course was ready to hug us and I said stop. She said she understood and that we will have to stay away from Bill especially, but she wanted to visit. We sat in the driveway and they sat in the garage. We were at least 12' apart.  We ended up staying for dinner and having Philly cheese steak sandwiches. Normally we would have spent the night in their house else but could not under the circumstances. Brenda said just sleep in the RV in front of their house because they live on a nice quiet street. I leveled the RV up but decided not to plug it in because the battery has been doing well keep it keeping things going and it was late at night almost 11:00 p.m.  

Sep 19

Elizabeth woke up at 2:44 hearing the alarm that the refrigerator was not working because the battery had rundown. I had run the generator a little bit before we went to bed to recharge the battery, but that wasn't enough. I plugged the RV in that morning and let it charge the battery, but the battery went down pretty quickly. We had breakfast of country ham biscuits from Brenda before she had to leave for church.  Salty, but yummy. She says she was going to pick up lunch at a diner that usually have lunch from on Sunday afternoon and would we stay? We did and she did, so we ate lunch with them in the garage socially distanced.   We talked until a little after 2 and Bill was getting tired because he doesn't stay up as late as he did last night.  We were finally able to make our goodbyes and leave. I decided to go by the AutoZone and have the batteries replaced under warranty. I expected some flack because I did not have the receipt, but Lisa knew the batteries were new relatively new and ask me when I had bought them, checked them out and said she was going to replace both of them. She did and by the time I got them replaced it was getting late in the afternoon. We tried to stay at the Seymour Johnson Air Force Base But we could not find the main gate if you can believe that! It has mostly been mothballed.  All the offices were closed and they probably did not have a spot at the small RV park on base anyway.  We found a campground in Selma, North Carolina only 22 miles away and spent the night there.  There is a single lady traveling in a smaller leisure travel like ours and yelled hello to us as I was hooking up. She came over later and visited for a bit while we were having our cocktails. She is a “full-timer” in that Mercedes van, but is quite happy and tows a small car to get around when she stays somewhere for 2 weeks plus.       Sep 20

It’s a very nice quiet campground although it does sit about a 150 yds. off interstate 95 But the noise is not very bad. The new batteries are doing what they're supposed to do and we will be leaving for Raleigh area this afternoon. With the exception of the hiccup with the steps and minor details with the battery, it’s been a very peaceful and calm trip.  We took our time and ended up at the North Carolina State fairgrounds in Raleigh. It’s a nice campground and economical, except during the State Fair in October😊. We will be visiting with one of my friends from Germany who actually graduated from NC State with a postgraduate degree in landscape architecture.  I saw the NC State sticker on his car in the parking lot of the building we both worked at in Stuttgart Germany.  We have been good friends with Rudi and Patty since 1980!   We will meet them for coffee tomorrow and then probably drive toward Winston Salem to meet with my friend’s widow on Wednesday. It’s been a nice relaxing three days or so.

Pictures of the last few days follow this post. Keep scrolling down

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Top row - The moving wall was in Goldsboro until this past Monday.  We met a very intelligent young Air Force lady from Northern California with her head screwed on straight helping people find names and giving out info. very impressed

rows 2 & 3 a dragon fly we saw on our morning walk.  Pretty

Bottom row - The rest of the seafood platter, yum

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2nd row - Country ham biscuits for breakfast courtesy of our friend Brenda DeShong

3rd row left - Edenton, NC was famous for very good furniture and this is called an Edenton table

3rd row rt - Penelope Barker’s house moved to it current location

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3rd row _ Seafood Platter

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On Way to Loretta’s house

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going to Loretta Lynn’s house

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Top - Entrance foyer of the Governor’s Residence/Palace

2nd row - Dining room and meeting room

3rd row - Exterior of the Governor’s residence and coat of arms.

4th row - The “magazine” where all the weapons and powder were stored in case of a conflict.  couldn’t let the riff raft has regular access to weapons, now could you?

5th - Stocks set up just outside the courthouse in case they were needed 

6th row - Prentis store- Oldest commercial building in Williamsburg