Pimple goes to Washington

 The sun was shining brightly on Washington for Independence Day. We caught the Metro to Constitution Avenue where the parade was to take place.  On the way Pimple found a sailor. We were there nice and early as I wanted to get a decent view and have somewhere to sit. We ended up near the National Archives and a nice lady gave Pimple a free fan, which came in handy as the day got hotter. We ended up sitting next to a couple on holiday from Canada. They lived not too far from Vancouver and had driven their motor home across Canada to visit relatives. They had then crossed over into Maine and driven down via New York. Tomorrow they are driving back to Vancouver. They were a nice couple. We discussed Politics, they had a good bead on Boris Johnson - just a born liar - but were interested in what we though of Fishy Rishi. They feel Trudeau has taken his eye off the ball regarding homelessness and drug addiction in Canada. The parade lasted about 2 hours. There are marching bands f...

 As it was still early afternoon we decided to go and explore a bit. It was very hot and when we reached the nearest Metro station it seemed like a good plan to take the train before Charlie melted. A very nice man in the ticket office helped me use the machines to get a couple of Metro cards. We got off in Down town and from there walked to The White House. Pimple was excited but we didn't see Joe. After a little rest we walked down to the National Mall. The Washington Monument is absolutely huge I hadn't realised it was so big. Quite a bit of the park is off limits because of the firework preparations but you can go and see the Lincoln Memorial. It's quite impressive. There are lots of signs telling you to be quiet and everyone inside is jabbering at the tops of their voices! The view of the Washington Monument in the reflecting pool is quite nice. Pimple liked that too. All the time we were walking around there was thunder rumbling in the distance and it spitted with rai...

 We stayed last night close to the Manassas Historic Battlefield. So this morning we decided to have a look around. The visitor centre had an excellent film detailing both the battles at Manassas and looking at some of the individual soldiers stories. Stonewall Jackson got his nickname at the first battle and the large statue of him near the visitor centre was a requirement for the National park Service getting the land from the Confederate families who had bought it. Pimple is thoughtfully providing a sense of scale for you. We went on a ranger guided talk which also visited the statue. Here the apparently 12 year old park range is providing the sense of scale. Some ladies raised money for a Confederate Cemetery at the battlefield. They weren't able to identify more than two individual soldiers so they are buried in mass graves grouped by which state they were from. The Union soldiers were mainly moved to Arlington National Cemetery. We then drove to Washington. It wasn't as b...

This morning Charlie announced there were only 6 tea bags left!! This is a major crisis as Charlie can't function without tea and if possible Tetley. So we had to make a trip to Walmart in search of teabags. Fortunately Winchester in Virginia has a very large Walmart and astonishingly enough it had Tetley "English Blend" teabags. The day was saved. It marked an upswing in the day, as at breakfast we had been talked to by an elderly man from Pennsylvania. Deepest Pennsylvania in a county where they only have two sets of traffic lights. He is a Very Conservative man by his own description. He believes every word of The Bible is true, that Biden is worse than the devil and Trump is The Man. As a consequence we had quite a brief breakfast and essentially ran away. Our day took us to Cedar Creek and Belle Grove. Cedar Creek is the sight of the battle that pushed the Confederates out of Shenandoah Valley. It has a small but interesting visitor centre with a helpful park ranger....

 Last night we went back to Pricketts Lock as there was a free concert. It was a trio playing a mix of folk and country for the first hour which was ok. The second half hour was more of a gospel sing-a-long not quite so good. Still the great and the good (and the elderly) of West Virginia who were there seemed to love it. This morning we are heading back east as we move towards Washington. We visited the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal in a couple of places. Firstly at the Cumberland terminus visitor centre. It was quite interesting and there was several differences to canals in the UK. They used teams of mules to pull their boats. One team working and one team stabled on the boat. They built tow paths through the tunnels so the mules could still work. I told the ranger about how they used legging to get boats through tunnels in the UK he was amazed. Pimple found a friend outside. We then followed the canal down to Williamsport. It was nice to walk along to towpath to one of the locks. T...

 I pulled the blind up this morning to see rain falling. Fortunately by the time we had finished breakfast it was at least dry. Destination today was Pricketts Fort, a civilian fort created during the colonisation of the west by settlers to protect again attacks by Native Americans. As the settlers took more and more of Native American land they faced attacks by tribes whose hunting grounds were being taken. To combat this the Prickett family constructed a wooden fort around their home. Families in the area would "fort up" when there were raid nearby until they felt safe to go back to their farms. Up to 250 people could end up in the 100 metre square fort. A local militia of around 90 men was formed and based there. The grandson of the original Prickett family built a house next door in the mid 1800's and a re-enactor showed us around it. Several re-enactors are based at the fort although sadly today there were only three today. The lady who was making baskets was very in...