Family Time

I'm not sure how many families are in the group camp next to us. There are four trailers and a whole bunch of children. This is a portion of them loading up in the back of one of the pickups with all of their water gear to go down to the swimming area of the river this morning. The kids were all quite excited and ready for adventure.

I don't know how their expedition turned out as we left and drove a little over an hour and a half to the town of King George to visit my niece Daphne and her family at their home --

We had a lovely day. I had not seen Daphne, her husband Kurt or their three sons for at least two years (We didn't get a chance to see them when they were at Sister Sherry's last summer.) Kurt's parents are also here visiting for a couple of weeks, so we got to see the whole family.

The boys have really grown up since we had seen them. I ended up playing group solitaire with them and their grand-mother (Niece Daphne was helping the youngest). It's fun when the kids get old enough to play games with.

We came home with enough goodies for dinner tomorrow -- fried chicken, potato salad and coconut cake with lemon filling!

A Few Errands

We got a call this morning from the office here at Rainbow Acres saying we had gotten a package in the mail and that they would be bringing it right over. Now that is service! Daughter Mary Mae did her usual job of packing and we got a very full box of mail. There were a couple of packages included that we had been waiting for. One was from Intuit with the upgrade for Quickbooks, the accounting software we use for ranch business. The other was from Ancestry.com with the DNA kit I had ordered. Since they have just come out with it for public use, they are limiting the kits to one per order. I am going to send this one in and then when they permit us to order another we'll do one for Forry (I just know there are some Vikings in that German's ancestry somewhere...).

We had a couple more new visitors to the feeders this morning. I had seen this beautiful yellow American Goldfinch over at the neighbor's and today it came over to visit our Nyger seed feeder.

 

This is the female of the Red-bellied Woodpecker. See how the red on her head does not come all the way down to the beak? (Note how the level of feed in the first feeder has dropped!)

Here's the picture of the male from a couple of days ago for comparison...

We did make a trip into town today. We went to the Post Office in King and Queen Courthouse to mail off a welcome present to our new Great-nephew Jackson Patrick -- and the DNA sample! Then we went on to a large Food Lion grocery store and re-supplied the kitchen. I got the makings to make Beef Stroganof that Forry's been asking for and for the makings of a pasta salad to take to Niece Daphne's tomorrow.

It is Friday of a holiday weekend and the campground is filling up. All of the empty sites near us were filled with trailers this afternoon and the air is full of wood smoke from the campfires. Many of the closed up sites have had their owners appear and this morning the sound of week-whackers and lawn mowers filled the air as they got their sites ready for the summer. There are lots of children running around -- and I haven't seen a single bird this afternoon...

Adventures in Virginia

We had a couple more new visitors to the bird feeders this morning. This Mourning Dove spent all of its time on the ground picking up the kernels the other birds had dropped. I have never seen a Mourning Dove at a feeder, only on the ground underneath...

This little male House Finch had been flitting around yesterday, but today is the first time we actually saw it at the feeders --

We had picked up a brochure at the office when we first came to Rainbow Acres Campground that told about the Village of Gloucester and the Ruins at Rosewell and decided to check them out. We had to call to get an address as there was none on the brochure and the Ruins are NOT in Gloucester! Given that the ruins are prominently featured in the brochure, you'd think there would at least be signs, but NO! We finally found the Visitor Center about eight miles away. There was a sign on the door saying "Please Excuse Our Mess." And was it ever! They had had a pipe break that flooded the place. All the carpet tile was ripped up and all the artifacts and other objects they had were packed up in boxes.We were given a one page photo-copied sheet that told about the brickwork, but that was it. There were no interpretive signs nor information other than the three sentences in the brochure...

"Rosewell was built between 1725-1738 by Governor John Page. It was frequently visited by his good friend, Thomas Jefferson. Rosewell was the centerpiece of a 3000 acre plantation that raised grain and tobacco"

The building was gutted by fire in 1916, but offers archaeologists an inside look at 18th century brickwork --

Visitors in the 1800s came up the York River and Carter Creek, which winds around the back of the mansion, to a landing, then were given a carriage ride to the front door.

The stump of this huge tree sits out by where the out-building that housed the kitchen was located. It must have offered good shade for the hot work done in the kitchen in the Virginia summers --

From Gloucester Village, we drove up the National Colonial Parkway along the York River to Yorktown. The banks of the river were strewn with what I'm sure were Alliums. In some places there were so many blooming, the roadside looked purple!
 

This is the huge drawbridge that crosses the York River between Gloucester and Yorktown. These are the towns that the British General Cornwallis occupied.

The Yorktown Victory Center celebrates the victory of the French fleet and the Continental Army under George Washington over the British that led to Cornwallis' surrender.

We weren't allowed to take pictures in the museum or during the movie explaining the siege, but we could take pictures of the Continental Army Encampment set up behind the museum.

This lady, in period costume, was demonstrating some of the medicines and instuments available to an army surgeon of that day.

Next to the military encampment was a replica of a 1780s farm. I was intrigued by the field of tobacco plants which were being watered (see the wooden bucket in the back?) and cultivated by hand just as they would have been in those days --

This is the inside of the tobacco barn, where the leaves were hung after harvesting to cure and dry --

The dried leaves would be packed in large hogsheads (barrels) and sold at auction for script which the farmer could then use to buy needed supplies. The hogsheads were shipped to England where the tobacco was processed. The colonies were not allowed to do this and had to import and buy their finished tobacco from the Brits...

We followed the Parkway as far as Jamestown and then headed back to Auntie Violet -- after a stop for blackberry/strawberry pie!

More Company -- And a Thunderstorm!

Today was a "stay-at-home" day. A day to do laundry and catch up on rest and household chores. I must admit we had a bit of a difficult time getting anything at all done as we were enjoying watching all of the visitors to our feeders today. The Eastern Bluebirds were outside a little after 6 AM with their ongoing squabbling.

We had a couple of new visitors to the feeders today. A pair of Red-Bellied Woodpeckers spent a great deal of time at the feeder. (Supposedly, they get their name from a red spot on the belly, but my bird book says "it's usually hard to see...")

This is the male (the red head on the female doesn't come all the way to the beak). He has taken a corn kernel from the feeder. As we watched, he would stick the kernel into a crevice in the bark, then hammer at it with his beak until he broke off smaller parts which he then ate.

After a while, this fellow came along and was cleaning up grains that had fallen to the ground from the feeders --

He tried very hard to eat directly from the feeders, which are supposed to be "squirrel-proof," but finally gave up and feasted from the ground.

For a good share of the afternoon, we could hear rumbling in the distance, which finally got closer and closer. There was a great many loud claps of thunder, then the rain began. You can see that the road alongside Auntie Violet has become a virtual lake --

The campsites on the other side of us (which are all reserved for Memorial Day campers) got pretty soggy looking --

The rain came down hard for about half an hour, then the storm moved on and we could hear it continue to rumble in the distance --

I'm sure by morning it will be hard to tell that there had been any standing water!

Birds!

This week we are at Rainbow Acres Campground near King and Queen Courthouse, Virginia --

There really is a rainbow at the entrance to the campground --

We were awakened this morning by a great deal of chattering going on outside of Auntie Violet's windows --

These Eastern Bluebirds were having either quite a discussion -- or a squabble -- and picked our motor home and its awning as the place to do it!

These was already a hangar on a tree next to us, so we made haste and put up our bird feeders. The one on the left has a mixture of "colorful bird" seed while the one on the right is filled with Nyger Thistle seeds.

We soon had even more company! This little Carolina Chickadee climbed up and down the tree with quick hops over to the feeders --

Then this Tufted Titmouse came to call (you can barely see his top-notch against the wire) --

This White-Breasted Nuthatch would try to reach the feed without leaving the tree, then would make a quick hop, grab some seed and quickly fly back to the tree.

The Northern Cardinal wandered over to check out what was going on --

In addition to the ones I got pictures of, we saw a Brown Creeper, Robins, crows, a raven, a House Finch, a Blue-Gray Gnatcatcher, an American Goldfinch, a Ruby-Throated Hummingbird and a flock of geese flying over! This is a great place for watching birds!

On To Virginia!

We left North Carolina this morning, once again heading north. This is one of many similar houses we saw in the state. Dormer windows on a second or third story and a front porch -- almost a requirement for a North Carolina house I think!

We were on Interstate 64 heading north when we crossed the border into Virginia and started seeing signs to check our gas... There was a l-o-n-g bridge and tunnel coming up. Next we saw signs saying that rigs with propane tanks must stop at the inspection station. We pulled off onto the right lane where there was a little hut. A man came out; went around the front of Auntie Violet and wrote down our license number; then he came to the passenger side door, opened it and asked if our propane tank was shut off; I said it was (I ALWAYS shut it off when I pick up the jack pad from that compartment!); he must have believed me 'cause he waved us on without checking further!

It took a bit to get back onto that VERY busy highway, but finally there was enough of a break in the traffic to allow us back on. We started to see signs warning us NOT to change lanes...

And then we were in the tunnel! It seemed pretty narrow...

And then it started getting darker... (there was only one row of lights along the ceiling instead of two!)

Many miles later -- but probably not as many as it seemed, we were out the other side! It sure was nice to see the sky again. Other than the GPS routing us right through downtown Norfolk, we pretty much traveled on tree-lined roads -- you certainly don't see much scenery in the East! As we got closer to King & Queen Courthouse, where the Rainbow Acres Campground is located, the narrower the roads got --

When we got to the Campground which was a half a mile down a dead-end dirt road, the ladies in the office did NOT have our reservation! Fortunately, I had the print-out of the confirmation email. It's a good thing they had several empty spaces. One of the ladies took us around in a golf cart to check out the available sites. We decided on one that was fairly level and wasn't in too dark of a treed area.

Off we went to set up, but when I checked the electricity, there was NO power. The lady from the office called the maintenance man, who was having his day off. He told her to try resetting the breaker. She did, but it kept popping back off. The maintenance man finally came over himself and after checking out the box at the site, decided the breaker was bad. He went and got a new one, replaced the old, and it worked! So almost an hour after we started setting up we finally finished the job.

Cape Hatteras Lighthouse

The Outer Banks are a thin broken strand of islands that curves out into the Atlantic Ocean and back again in a sheltering embrace of North Carolina's coast.

The islands are connected by Highway 12 which stretches south all the way to Hatteras Island.

Much of the highway stretches through narrow portions of the islands where the sand dunes sift over the road like drifting snow. There are dozers parked alongside the road ready to keep the sand at bay.

Anywhere there is an island wide enough, there are miles and miles of multiple-storied vacation rentals and summer houses --

Many of them are quite fanciful with towers and balconies offering views of the ocean --

At the end of the line (you need to take a ferry to go any further south...) you come to the Cape Hatteras Light Station --

Cape Hatteras Lighthouse is an active light; at 198.5 feet, it is the tallest brick lighthouse in the world.

The distinctive spiral paint of the lighthouse make it a daylight landmark. The treacherous waters off the coast of the Outer Banks bear the name Graveyard of the Atlantic. Over 600 ships wrecked here as victims of the shallow shoals, storms and war (including so many sunk by German submarines during WWII that it was known as Torpedo Alley). The Diamond Shoals, a bank of shifting sand ridges often hidden beneath the turbulent seas off of Cape Hatteras have claimed a legion of ships.

In the summertime, visitors are allowed to climb to the top. We did not pay the extra fee to make the climb...

Across the parking lot from the lighthouse, we saw these lovely ladies. They seemed totally oblivious to all the tourists...

 

As  we drove back north on the narrow two-lane road, we caught occasional glimpses of the Atlantic Ocean between the sand dunes.

We saw many people walking on the beaches, but few swimmers. The ranger at the lighthouse said that rip tides were very common.

On the other side, in Pamlico Sound, there were lots of people playing in the water. In one area there were so many kite surfers we couldn't understand how they kept from getting entangled...

 

The whole area of the Outer Banks islands -- except for the eight villages -- is part of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore.