After all the site changes yesterday this is the site we now call home.  It is really nice and we were almost level before we even started leveling.   

Went out with my camera just at our site and came up with the following.  A pretty blue flower.  To let you know how small this guy is the white thing beside it is just one petal from a flower from the tree by us. 

a nice violet type flower.

You can see right down it's throat.    It has a fuzzy beard too. 

This is a nest in the tree by us.  There was a bird there while we were out once, but he was in and out before we could ID him.

The wind came up and it was like it was snowing out.  I really want the flowers to stay because they are pretty and they smell heavenly.

 It is a tall tree.  I am thinking it is a cherry tree.



 
 A closer look

 

 A very close up of the flowers

We stayed home and got a few things done around the rig.

Laura has been sick for some time now.  She put up with not feeling very good and a cough for a week or so.   She then had had enough and headed for the doctor.  He put her on meds and she rested and took her meds for a week and things were getting worse.  She had all the above plus really a bad pain in her chest when she coughed or for that matter moved.  So she headed back to the doc and found out she has pneumonia and was put on different meds and told to stay at home and rest for the rest of the week.  Here's hoping you are feeling better really soon and finally get well  

Oh yea, remember the freeway backup I told you about in the last blog.  That was a police chase and the guy ran out into the freeway rush hour traffic and got hit.  So now it is a crime scene I guess.  There are signs all along the roadway say if you have an accident it is the law to pull over.       

This is a Red Winged Black Bird with red epaulets hidden.  This pic was taken yesterday about 155 mile south of the next pix you will see.  You will notice the bright sunny glow is not in them. 

We are on the road.  It is a very gloomy day and raining off and on, mostly on, all day.  We left Virginia and entered into West Virginia.  They have a lot of work to do on their roads here.  We are traveling I 81 and it is so rough.

Then after a while we enter into Maryland.  I noticed on the map that the border between West Virginia and Virginia is a straight line, but the border between West Virginia and Maryland is very wiggly. 
 The reason for that is ....

The Potomac River.  This is the same river we saw while sitting on the porch of George Washington's home at Mount Vernon a couple of days ago.

It was not long at all and we were in Pennsylvania.

Here we see these big farms.  They are so pretty.  Even with the rainy, gloomy, gray day the country side is so pretty.  I have decided that my favorite color is not blue like I always thought, but green.  When ever I come upon something green I think "how very nice this is".  So green is my favorite color.  And there are a zillion shades of green too.  Don't believe me, just go outside and look. 

We were all humming along on the highway and all of a sudden "stop".  We also noticed that there was absolutely no traffic coming the other direction.  This just can't be good.  And wouldn't you know it we are only 1.8, according to Tom our GPS, miles from exiting this freeway.

This is the on ramp.  They are not allowing any traffic on the freeway.  This is on the other side from us. 

We saw no wrecked cars.  Just all these guys and more standing around, doing what guys do when they are standing around (?????).  There were four more cop cars with lights and sirens going stuck in the traffic that this made trying to get here too, to stand around with the guys already standing around so they can do what guys do when they are standing around.  Just saying.

We are getting very close to our new home.

We checked in and got the map of the resort.  Was told to go to this section for a 50 amp site.  So off we go and pick this great site and set up and spread out and plug in and water and sewer.  All the inside prep is done and we are eating a hearty bowl of soup I had made.  Tap, tap at the door.  Sorry this is an annual site and you will have to move.  Well mark them so we know!!!!  I am a little "hot" around the edges about this anyway.  So we ....

move to this site just below the other one.  We get all set up and spread out and plug in and water and sewer.  All the inside prep is done.  Well to get the rig level we had to double block the front and extend the jacks all the way out.  This had the front end up off the wheel about 6/7 inches.  The rig was moaning and groaning.  So we decided we did not want this so we packed up again and headed for a new site. 

To make a long story longer we are home in site number 3!!!

It was a very gloomy rainy day here so we stayed home and rested.  We also played some cards and rested.  We are getting ready to head North tomorrow.  We are going about 155 miles.  I have no pix and really nothing to report in this blog. 


I do have some funnies for you.

 

  Dad had a tattoo and he always said about the same thing as this toon.  My son also has a tat and he will be saying the same thing too.
   This one is for Laura and the step-kitties
 

This one will be short.  We stayed home today so I could recop from walking the whole George Washington Estate.   We really did enjoy it and I pooped out and we did not do the museum, grist mill and distillery.  Looking the map over we missed a lot at the museum that I think would have been fun and I would have learned a lot too.  So if you go leave time to see it all.  They have done a great job of presenting the information. 

I did do dishes, ironed clothes, and made chicken soup.  But I am so glad we did not plan anything today

I do have a pic of the railroad tracks here in the park.  I missed a great shot the other day when we looked down the tracks and looking back at us were the head lights of a pickup truck coming at us.  They we track maintenance.  
  We have only had two trains that we know of.  They were just a couple of engines.  They were late at night so we could not see all the good.  

There was a problem with my blog yesterday too.  No pix in part and unedited text.  There were pix and edited text when I published it and looked at it last night.  ghosts are at work around here.  
   This is for a friend from my husband.  LOL yea right.
   This one is for my grandkitties.  
 

Today we headed to Mount Vernon.  It is a great day.  We were thinking about all the President's homes we have been to so far.  George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe,and James Garfield.  They all very interesting men.  We did do a drive by George Bush's home in Midland, TX.  Rog's sister use to life just around the corner.  It is not memorialized by any stretch of the imagination.


Here Rog is out on a walk with the Washington's.

Love this stain glass

 Interesting bush

    Close up of flowers


   tree

   close up of flowers



 Mount Vernon is the home of George and Martha Washington and the most popular historic house in America.  This was proven to us by the row of buses lined up that had already dropped off their people.
George Washington made Mount Vernon his home from 1754 until his death in 1799.  During that time he enlarged the house to an impressive 221-room mansion and expanded the estate from 2,100 to 8,000 acres.



The upper garden, with its dual purpose of beauty and production, featured 3 large planting areas, each separated by wide paths.  The planting beds were edged with a tight row of short boxwoods.  Filling the center of each bed were dultivated veggies of all types, which would supplement the porduce of the lower garden.  The uppper garden's most formatl element was a set of boxwood parterres, which incorporated the French fleur-de-lis as a major design element.
The garden today was reconstructed after years of careful archaelogy and research.  




Before building his greenhouse, George Washington studied serveral designs, finally adapting a plan from a similar sturcture in Baltimore Maryland.  He and his gardeners tested their horticulturel skills by cultivating plants exotic to Virginia.  The greenhouse provided a winter refuge for tropical and semi-tropical plants such a coffee, orange, lemon, line, sago palm, and aloe.  The orginal green house burned down in 1835 it was rebuilt on the original site in 1951.
 




The stove room provided heat that palms, orange trees, and other tropical plants in the greenhouse in the winter.  Hot air from the stove flowed through a series of flues into the green house floor next door.  Fueling the fire consumed extensive quantities of wood.  A slave had to stay in the room 24/7 from fall to early spring.  
 George Washington would have told you he was first and foremost a farmer.
 



This is the hole into the greenhouse where the heated air would go.
  I am sitting on the back porch of the Washington home .  I am looking out on the Potomac River.   The big tree that does not look too good was here when George was living here.
  The kitchen house. 

    The weather vane on the house.  It is a dove with an olive branch.  

   The tomb where George and Martha and their family are buried now.  
 

We were there for the wreath ceremony.  They place a wreath at the tomb every day.


 Washington used the most modern scientific farming methods.  He introduced an innovative 7 year crop rotation, plant and experimented with soil enhancers to increase the productivity of his fields and much more.

He divided his Mount Vernon estate into five farms.  The Washington lived on the Mansion House farm, and the other four farms were for agricultural production.  
 
 
 George Washington invented this barn in 1792 to improve the processing of wheat.

upper level of barn
   lower level of barn

   Slaves spread harvested wheat on the outer circle of the floor.  Horses trotted in a circular path, and the impact of their hooves broke the wheat our of the straw.  The loose grain fell through gaps between the floorboards to the level below, where the grain was shoveled into bins, cleaned, and then sent to Washington's gristmill to be ground into flour.  This barn is a reconstruction of Washington's innovative treading barn, based upon his original drawings and specs.


We had a great day and a long day.  Hope you learn just a little of we did.  This was one more great man that help form our great country.

"Thank you George" 

There is so much to see and learn at Mount Vernon.  It is a must see.