November 8 - 2017 Heiskell, Tennessee

On Wednesday (November 8), we headed for the Smoky Mountains. We left the campgrounds, looking forward to a peaceful day in the beautiful nature of the mountains. We did find it (more about that later), but before we got there, we ran in to Sevierville and Pigeon Forge!

This is about 10 miles of shopping outlets (cheapest prices anywhere), specialty stores (biggest store anywhere), restaurants (best food anywhere), hotels, entertainment, amusement parks…. Glitz, glimmer, lights, noise…. One big circus! The town of Sevierville is the hometown of Dolly Parton, and her amusement park – Dollywood, is in Pigeon Forge. The whole place had her “personality” (the more glitter the better).

It was way over the edge, but somehow we were drawn into it. Guess that is what it is all about:-)

The best way to describe the place, is to show it in pictures. So, here are some….

These pictures were taken in the Christmas store. There were so many decorations, it was hard to find single ornaments.

Wonder what this building looks like inside?

The Hatfields and McCoys were 2 hillbilly families, who had a feud (nabokrig) going on for years. I wonder if they have food fights here?

They even had half of the Titanic!

Hollywood's version of Mount Rushmore

And more Christmas decorations. This time not at the Christmas store, but at a place, where they were putting on a Christmas show.

Two quite different hobbies (fritidsaktivititer) in one store.
We don't really see the connection!

We could have taken a helicopter ride. This is one of 3 helicopters, that we saw, advertising rides. 



The worlds biggest knife store - of course :-),
and if a knife won't do it, maybe a Sig Sauer will !!

To be continued….

Written by Mary  

November 7 - 2017 Heiskell, Tennessee

Monday (6th) and Tuesday (7th) we spend in transit. A long one.
Monday we drove a little over 400 miles (ca. 650km) from Virginia to Asheville, North Carolina (just at the edge of the Great Smoky Mountains).
Pretty much a perfect ride. Nice roads, nice weather and the whole thing in 8 hours, breaks included.

The picture we didn't get:
We were passed by a huge motorhome (bus size). Seen a lot of those.
The big motorhomes most times have a car hooked up behind them. We have seen a lot of those too. But this one had a fairly big pickup truck trailing (Not sure we have seen that before). In the cargo bay of the pickup truck was a golf cart!!! We are sure we haven't seen that before!! 😊
We laughed so hard, that by the time we got the camera out, it was long gone.

Tuesday we only drove 130 miles/200 km from Asheville to Heiskell, Tennessee
(just north of Knoxville). A tough drive though. We had to cross the Smoky Mountains. And it was raining all the time. Thunder and lightning some of the time.

One picture. From our current campsite:

We just don't understand the purpose of camping then!!

Written by JJ

 

November 4-5 - 2017 Toano, Virginia

Believe it or not, JJ is finally getting enough of history and monuments (at least for a while he says😊).

The area we are in, is also VERY rich in history. On Saturday (Nov. 3), we were in Richmond, Virginia. That is the city, that was the capital for the Confederate States (sydstaterne) during the Civil War (borgerkrigen). We wanted to fill in some of the gaps, and get some views of the war from the side of the Confederates.

A lot of things we knew already, but we did learn a few new things, like:

-    Besides the issue of slavery, the southern states disagreed with the government about taxes (that old story!).

-     General Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House (the name of a town, not a building – we also learned), was not the end of the war. Battles continued to be fought in North Carolina and Texas/Oklahoma. It took about a month until the last troops had surrendered. (We had heard this before, but got more details today.)

-    Even though battles took place as far west as Kansas and as far south as Texas, most of the battles took place in or near Virginia.

-    That the Confederacy had several official flags, none of which is the flag, we think of today as being the Confederate flag. That flag was the battle flag for the Army of Northern Virginia (Lee’s army) and later became the battle flag for the Confederate Army.

First flag of the Confederacy - Stars and Bars

Battle flag for the Army of Northern Virginia 

-    There was never a peace treaty signed after the Civil War. The Confederacy never conceded (opgav), and the American government would probably not have accepted it anyway, because that would have given the Confederacy some legitimacy (Peace Treaties are made between nations).

-    The president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, was captured (fanget) in Georgia on May 10, 1865, and was imprisoned (fængslet). He was never brought to trial for treason (landsforrædderi), and was released after 2 years.

House where Jefferson Davis lived and worked, while president of the Confederacy

 

 

We ran across a couple of monuments. We haven’t seen too many from the Confederate side, so we thought we would show them😊

 

General Lee

 

Stonewall Jackson

 

Jefferson Davis

 

Yesterday, we thought we could write that we were done with the Civil War now, but decided that might be premature. We found a little more today😊 We drove out to see some of the old plantations (herregård) from the 1600 & 1700’s. One of them has the claim to fame, that “Taps” (et stykke militær musik) was written there during one of the battles of the Civil War. There are a couple pictures documenting these events.

 

 

Written by Mary

 PS - We saw these 2 new crops at the plantation.

 

November 2-3 - 2017 Toano, Virginia

Thursday and Friday (2nd and 3rd) we went back in history again. All the way back to when the first permanent English settlement was established in America.

Thursday, we went to Jamestown and Williamsburg.

In 1607, one hundred men landed on a small island in what is now the James River in Virginia. They were sent out by a private company, The Virginia Company of London, who had received permission from King James I.

They build a fort and named the settlement Jamestown, after the king. And they struggled. They were hit by diseases, the worst drought (tørke) in many years, attacks from the Indians. After the first summer only 38 people were still alive.
The Virginia Company sent more men and at some point, also women.
In 1609-1610 there was a famine (hungersnød) within the settlement. Many of them died, and some of the survivors were so desperate that they reverted to cannibalism.

A model of the first fort

Foundations of one of the buildings from the mid 1600's

The Indians were both hostile and friendly. They protected their territories and families, but they also traded with the colonists, taught them how to survive in the new country, shared food when possible. The most famous of these Indians was Pocahontas. She served as a peacemaker between the two races. You can read a little of her story below.

 The settlement/colony didn’t really get a foothold and start to prosper until they discovered “the golden leaf” – tobacco, that could be exported back to England. They started plantations along the shores of the James River.

Around 1620 the settlement in Virginia became a colony under the English Crown, with governor and all, and the English had started their development of their new territory – America.

Jamestown was the capital (hovedstad) until 1699 when it was moved to Williamsburg (about 10 miles/15km north).

In Jamestown we also found a third contender (kandidat) as far as the Birthplace of the United States is concerned. First Boston, then Philadelphia and now Jamestown 😊. (I wonder if there are more).

 

 

We followed the line of history and went to Williamsburg.
They have a very nice recreation of old Williamsburg there (Frilandsmuseum).
Some 80 buildings: houses, businesses, a church, the governors building and the capitol (regeringsbygningen) in which the politicians of Virginia decided that they would join the other colonies in signing the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

Governor's mansion

 

 It is quite amazing to see how far they were able to get in just 150 years.
From cannibalism to a well-functioning society with impressive buildings and a political system that could make the big decision of revolution.

Capitol

We also ran into a couple of the usual suspects. In this case Washington and Jefferson.
Not as rebellions or presidents, but at church, in the museum, that they attended when they were students at the famous college William and Mary, which is nearby.
 

 

Friday, we went to Yorktown. The Battle of Yorktown took place in September/October 1781.
It was the last major battle in the war for independence.
George Washington beat the British general Cornwallis. That’s the short version.
The longer version includes the facts that the French (who the year before had decided to send troops to help the colonists) decided to send their fleet to the end of Chesapeake Bay to block the British from sending reinforcement to the British soldiers at Yorktown.
At the same time a big part of Washington’s army (3000 men) and as many French soldiers marched the almost 400 miles/600 km from New York to Yorktown to meet up with troops already in the area.
With an army of close to 20.000 men Washington started the campaign on September 28.

The morning of the Battle of Yorktown

 

Trenches and canons at the battle field

On October 19th the British laid down their weapons.

This took place on Surrender Field outside of Yorktown.
There they have an audio presentation of the surrender. And I just laughed when it ended:
“Of this field it might be said: The United States was born” 😊 😊 Just hours after I had wondered if I would run into more candidates!

In Yorktown there is a great museum about the revolutionary war. From start to end.

Very nice exhibitions, movies, pictures and artifacts, but the most exciting was a 45-minute classroom session, where a very competent speaker took us through the war including years before and after (from 1763 to the signing of the Constitution in 1787). When he asked about the birthdate of the US, I was ready with my four candidates 😊. This guy believed in September 17th 1787 when the Constitution was signed.

This is what they thought the soldiers camp looked like.



Field kitchen

 

After Yorktown there were no major battles, but it took another two years before the Treaty of Paris was agreed upon in 1783. The British gave up all rights in the colonies.

So this ended our long journey in the footpath of the revolutionary war.

The weather has been exceptional these 2 days. Even according to the Virginians it is unusually good.
Both days it has been 78 Fahrenheit / 25 Celsius, sunshine and no wind.

Written by JJ 

October 30-31 - 2017 Dumfries, Virginia - November 1 Toano, Virginia

About a week ago we visited the White House (or at least we saw it as close up as they will let you (which is quite a ways away)).

Monday (the 30th) we went to see the two other branches of power:
The Supreme Court (Højesteret) and The Capitol (parlamentsbygningen).
This time we were invited inside. 😊
In the Supreme Court we were not allowed to take any pictures.
We did get to go into the heart of the place, the courtroom and got to see, for a few minutes, a real case taking place with the nine justices listening to, and arguing with, counsel (advokaterne). Very interesting.

U.S. Supreme Court

After that we had a tour at the capitol.

US Capitol

We went up to the room in the rotunda (kuppel) where there were lots of statues and large paintings.



The rotunda

 

The statues were "the usual suspects": Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln etc. etc.
But also more current like Eisenhower, Ford and not least Reagan.😊
Not all the statues were presidents, but I did spot one that I think should have been. 😊

Tuesday was set aside for resting and household activities.
Well, ended up that we didn't have a choice either, since we had to bring the Tahoe to a garage (værksted) because the rear brakes started to sound strange on Monday. We found a garage nearby who could take us in Tuesday morning.
They had the car all day and we had a major job done on the rear brakes.
New pads, rotors and parking brakes (bremseklodser, skiver og håndbremse).

Got the car back late afternoon and we are now ready to move on after a little over a week near Washington DC.

And then not really anyway. On the way back from the garage I noticed that our brake controller in the car for the electrical brakes on the camper was out. I went back to the garage this morning. They found out that the controller was not working, but this was not their line of business, so they couldn't fix it. They helped as much as they could. I eventually found a place 20 miles south, in Fredericksburg, that sold the same kind.
We had this one installed in Minnesota 2 months ago!
The place in Fredericksburg had the controller, took me in right away and installed a new one. They even called the manufacturer about the warranty (garanti) and arranged that I got a new one for free. They only charged $38 for labor(arbejdsløn). That is pretty impressive customer service.

Because of that we got out of Dumfries a few hours later than planned.
We are now in Toano, Virginia (40 miles/65km east of Richmond, just before Williamsburg).

We are at a very small campground, a very nice one in the woods.
Quiet and big site. Full hookup, working Wi-Fi. And only $30 per night!
There must be a catch (en hund begravet)!! Well so far we have found 2:
You cannot bring alcohol to the campground and they would rather you did not bring cats or dogs😊. We can live with both (well without actually)😊.

Written by JJ