#118 2023 January 21-27. Nomad Diary. Continuing Our 9 Night Road Trip to Portland, Maine. In Kingsport, Tennessee with Glenn and Phoebe. Twin Nephew with Twins! Driving North Into Winter.
Darrell showing the brighter lights at Glenn’s house.
Saturday. 21. At Kingsport, Tenn at Glenn and Phoebe’s new house until Monday. This house is new to them since they decided to sell their house in Athens, Alabama and move to this town. They closed on this house on January 6th. They are still unpacking and getting settled by discovering all sorts of home owner issues here. So much of this discovery is about making this house comfortable and useful for their needs. Glenn works remote and has his office set up in a room on the hall. Today Darrell is rewiring a light fixture and hanging it in the front foyer. Besides the rewiring, Phoebe had to find extra decorative chain and then paint it to match! Phoebe found this light and two others at the ReStore donation center. Darrell has also been helping with shopping and getting small items of repair taken care of while we are here.
Phoebe making pizzas on Saturday night and there were plenty of left overs for Sunday night.
No pictures are allowed on social media of the twins by their parent’s request.
Sunday. 22. Darrell and Glenn have an older brother, Jeff. Jeff has a set of twin sons. One of those twins, Zach, lives about 1 ½ hours from here in Asheville, North Carolina. He and his wife, Catherine, have infant twins: Adam and Helen, and we are seeing these babies today! The babies were really sweet being born on October 3rd. They are old enough now to be alert and to be social. They also allow anyone to bottle feed them. We all had a nice time passing them around at their apartment home. We were able to go to a grocery after morning worship and get roasted chickens and hot vegetables to add to Catherine and Zach’s big salad! It was so much fun for us! The sermon was quite good and I shared the link for the recording on youtube with several people. The location was Asheville church of Christ and the preacher is Phillip Mullins. On Sunday night we attended a singing worship at Kingsport, Tennessee church of Christ. The people were friendly and welcoming.
Darrell working on his computer in our upgraded, larger hotel room.
Darrell at Cracker Barrel next to the fire that is cozy and mindful of older times.
Monday. 23. We had breakfast with Glenn and Phoebe before packing our truck and driving to Winchester, Virginia for the night at a hotel. Lunch at Cracker Barrel and Dinner at a local Mexican place that we found on Google. I like to look at restaurant pictures and comments before committing to going there. We were also pleasantly surprised that we liked the new-to-us Cracker Barrel menu. We booked the hotel through booking.com with customer discounts and upgrades, and the price is around the $100 range. The hotel was clean and pleasant and served a simple breakfast. We rested well and were able to do our morning exercises in our room. We are driving slowly to Maine and expecting to arrive on Thursday or Friday depending on the winter weather and driving conditions. We don’t expect to stop and be outside much with the winter weather.
Looking at Harpers Ferry at the base of the town next to the rivers. The right corner building is the John Brown Museum with great restrooms too!
Lewis’s drawing of this convergence of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers.
Looking back toward Harpers Ferry from the rivers. It is a steep uphill to the church with the steeple and the hill of trees behind where there are more houses and history of the upper town.
One of the original pikes commissioned by John Brown for his army that never came from rebel slaves.
Original stairs going up the hill to the church building in Harpers Ferry.
Me on the hiking trail above lower Harpers Ferry with a great view of the river.
View of the Shenandoah river from the hiking trail near Upper Harpers Ferry.
Our niece Kris and her husband Jake. Expecting a baby in early June. Glenn and Phoebe’s oldest daughter and 1st grand on the way.
Tuesday. 24. We discovered how close we are to Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. With the sunshine, we decided to go to this historic town. We arrived and it was beautiful even with the cold! The town has a rich history. There are several Federal museums and National Park holdings here. One of the big stories here is about John Brown in the 1850’s. We chose the museum about him to spend our time in. After we read about his spoiled uprising against the US government in aggressive defense of slavery, we took the scenic hike back to the remote parking lot. We began at the entry to the parking lot with Darrell getting his lifetime Federal Parks Pass! This was one of his best gifts ever and he was expecting it because the government had recently announced this veteran perk. Today’s park pass gained us a $20 entry fee! Pretty great perk! We rode the shuttle from the parking lot into the small town that in season is booming with traffic and tourists. It’s a cold day, off season and beautiful clear skies. We shared the mostly shut-down town with about 20 other tourists. We ate lunch at one of the 2 available restaurants, purchased a cup of coffee and bought some candy at a history of candy shop. We loved the stop and the history we learned. There is also information about Lewis and Clark here and the Appalachian Trail and the settling and growth of the town and railroad and the river and more. It’s a beautiful location with rich stories. For dinner we met our niece Kris and her husband Jake in Carlisle, Pennsylvania where we stayed at a Microtel for $70! This price with the small breakfast included made us wonder if we really should try it. But we decided to go for it and it was amazing! Clean, and comfortable and well-managed. It was a bargain that we didn’t rue! Lol!
Snowy scene driving into New York from Pennsylvania.
Clear roads of snow and of traffic with beautiful scenery.
Going to dinner in Rotterdam, New York while the snow was coming down pretty good for a while. It was melting by the next morning before we left town.
We arrive at the Redwood Diner in Rotterdam, NY. Dinner was home cooked with a big selection on the menu.
Wednesday. 25. Today we started out heading for somewhere in New York. We got a text from Glenn who told us there was a big storm coming across New York and Maine that we needed to pay attention to for our drive. We looked it up and kept our eyes out for highway signs as we drove. There was a sign for heavy snow being expected when we crossed into New York, but hardly any flakes coming down. The roads were clear of snow and of cars. Some highways were asking people to be off of the roads by noon today. We stopped to have lunch at another Cracker Barrel. Lol. The roads off of the highway were slushy and only cleared by traffic. We decided to keep driving past noon and we arrived without snow and without much traffic to Rotterdam, NY around 2:30 pm. We booked a room for about $100 with a small breakfast. It was okay for one night. At dinner time we went out into the now snowing weather to a local diner. We enjoyed our meal and were back to our hotel where we took in a mid-week Bible study. We are only 5 ½ hours driving to Portland, and if all goes well on Thursday we will arrive then.
Town in Vermont where we ate lunch.
Andrea and Quinn sharing a smile in their living room.
Thursday. 26. The drive to Portland, Maine today took us through Vermont and New Hampshire. There was some nice blue skies and sunshine with a stop for soup and sandwiches for lunch. We took turns driving and enjoyed the snowy mountain drives and the small towns through rural areas. We arrived to meet Quinn and Andrea in their home they’ve been in since September. Jeremy is out of town and will be back on Saturday night. Andrea cooked dinner for us and enjoyed our visit and getting to know Quinn again at his current age of 2 years and 4 months. We were given a room upstairs with a private bathroom on the hall that Andrea has rented as an Airbnb. We plan to be here for a month.
Andrea took this nice picture of us with Quinn.
Friday. 27. Today we went to Target and Wal-mart for light shopping. In the evening I was able to make the recipe that Andrea had made last night for a repeat. It’s one of my favorite meals: Asian chicken lettuce wraps. Quinn only played while Andrea went to deliver refugee meals for a couple of hours. He and Darrell shared some popcorn before heading to bed.
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