Advertisement
Published: October 31st 2012
Washington, Maryland and Virginia showed us their fall colors from October 16-28. We were fortune to have lovely weather as well --it was "the calm before the storm" of Hurricane Sandy.
The main purpose of the trip was to attend Tom's 55th class reunion from his high school, the Landon School, in Bethesda, Maryland. We attended events there, but we were also able to visit Washington, in particular the Mall, with its great monuments and memorials, as well as the very impressive Holocaust Museum and George Washington's house in Mt. Vernon. While Tom was at the school Saturday afternoon, I also got to the National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian's American History Museum. While in D.C., we stayed with my college friend (thank you, Suzy!) and were able to have dinner with my oral history friends, Don and Anne Ritchie (great to see you both!) and meet with my friend Paris T. We also attended a wonderful show at the Arena Theater with high school buddies of Tom's: a retrospective of journalist Molly Ivins with the very talented Kathleen Turner.
From D.C. we traveled down to Charlottesville, Virginia. You can't go to Charlottesville without seeing Thomas Jefferson's beloved
Monticello and the University of Virginia. But, believe it or not, we also got to hear Bruce Springsteen while we were there! (He was giving a free Support Obama concert.) From Charlottesville, we drove down to Richmond and out to Deltaville in the Tide Water area along the coast. Tom had close friends there, and they very graciously welcomed us for several days. While staying with them, we were able to visit Yorktown, Williamsburg and Virginia.
We had planned to visit Norfolk, Virginia Beach and the outer banks of North Carolina, but because of the impending hurricane, left the area 3 days earlier than planned.(Luckily, we were able to find tickets out of Dulles on Sunday morning instead of on Tuesday evening.) Luckily, too, we were lable to take advantage of our last night on the east coast. After driving back to the D.C. area and to our hotel at Dulles Airport, we had dinner in town and attended another show at the Arena Theater. This time it was "One Night with Janis Japlin", a rousing rendition of Janis' famous songs, with great singers and a fantastic rock band. Quite an evening! (=lots of grey-haired babyboomers singing along to
every song!)
All in all, it was a great trip. We were sorry to have to cut it short, but feel lucky we were able to get out of the area before all the havoc of the hurricane. Tom's friends in Deltaville had some damage but not as much as could be expected because their home is on a hill above the water. Others in Deltaville, as well as people up and down the east coast, were not so fortunate.
(I've posted 65 photos with captions, so please scroll down to see them all.)
Advertisement
Tot: 0.079s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 8; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0557s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 2;
; mem: 1mb
harriet welty rochefort
non-member comment
your North American trip
Hi Hilary, Great to hear about your trip. I was on the East Coast almost at the same time, also saw the fall leaves, and got out just in the nick of time. I was promoting "Joie de Vivre" - hope you'll enjoy reading it if you get a copy (it's on amazon, both in hardcover and on kindle). And if you like it and want to write a review for amazon, that's even better! Hope to see you in Paris in December. All the best, Harriet