Teabag crisis averted.

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. I don't think it gets too many visitors so he was happy to chat. As we left he called out "I'm open until 4.30 if you think of any questions". I think there was a wistful note to that.

We followed the auto tour route and I rescued a turtle from the middle of the road and certain death.

We also hiked by a pond full of dragonflies.

On the route was Belle Grove Plantation which was used by the Union Army as a headquarters during the war. You can see it behind Pimple in the photograph. Before the war it was a farm with quite a large number of enslaved people. We went on a tour of the house and there was also a talk about one of the slaves, called Judah, who was the cook. It was an interesting experience. They didn't exactly gloss over the slavery but they didn't really confront it. The introductory film said that the white people needed the black people and equally the black people needed the white people. I can't say it seems quite like that to me. The talk about the cook discussed how uncomfortable the working conditions would have been for her (generally very hot) but nothing else. At one point they talked about how one of her children was sold and that the mistress had bought him back. The whole party went "aw how nice" which isn't my first response.

The gift shop had some delightful treasures in the "collectables for sale" section.