Dinghy Marking

Mid July 2019

So we bought our new dinghy last summer, finally took delivery last fall, and just barely got it registered a couple months before just as we left Brunswick. But it still did't have the registration numbers marked on it, along with the stickers. We'd been lucky so far in avoiding imperial attention.

I finally got around to that on a very hot day, taking the dinghy back to the floating dock so I could sit on the edge with my feet in the water while I did it. Not bad, but the wakes from passing boats didn't make it easy. It's an older code, but it checks out.

As I was heading back to the boat a storm was starting to roll in, thankfully cooling things off a little.

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Mitchie's Tavern

13 June 2019

We then went back down the mountain to Michie's Tavern, which we had passed a few times now. The tavern itself, now a restaurant and gift shop, was interesting, and there was a great view. There were also multiple additional buildings on the site of roughly the same era, most of which that had been moved there, that were turned into static displays or additional gift shops.

After wandering from building to building through a nice afternoon shower, we hopped back in the car again headed for dinner in Fredericksburg. We had dinner at a little Italian place called Otello's. During the last part of our drive back to the boat in the increasing dark there were swarms of fireflies catching the corner of our eyes along the roadside. One deer made a run for it in front of us, but he was fast and it didn't really even require the tap on the brakes.

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Thomas Jefferson's Grave

12 - 13 June 2019

Down from some of the garden areas is the family graveyard, where Jefferson is buried.

The short walk down from the graveyard to the visitors centers is very pretty.

We came back to Monticello the next day for Heather to more fully partake of the visitor center and the gift shop.

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Monticello Grounds

12 June 2019

The grounds had also been restored. They have planted what would have been present at the time in the manner in which it would have been tended.

Down from the house is a small street of sorts with several buildings, including slave quarters. The interiors were pretty crude, as seen below.

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Monticello Wings

12 June 2019

On either side of the house are these wings that have a porch or deck or balcony on the top, but also serves as the roof for the quarters below. The top is almost level with the lawn between the wings, but on the sides and back are exposed walls with access to the rooms beneath.There is a passageway between the wings that runs beneath the house.

Beneath the house and wings are storage room, an ice house, the kitchen, and quarters. After 30-40 yards from the house the wings take a 90 degree bend away from the back of the house towards the lawn. At the end of each of these wings are small room, used as guest quarters.

The various quarters and such below the house and wings are mostly restored with access and plaques. Heather loves a good plaque. Below is is the kitchen.

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To Monticello

12 June 2019

Now that we were finally in the Chesapeake our first real road trip from the boat was Monticello. There were no real interstates going our way to Charlottesville, from nowhere to almost nowhere, so it was almost all two-lane byways all the way there. We saw a lot of the countryside, then had a late lunch at Croby's, within sight of Monticello at the base of the mountain. After that we went up the hill.

I was here maybe three decades ago, and much of the property looked very different. When I went before you drove to the top of the mountain and parked in a field maybe a 100 yards from the house, just to the right of the first picture below. Then there was little else around. The wings on the sides of the house were being dug up at the time, so you peered over what remained of the the walls down at the gridded floors.

Now you park well down the mountain at the visitor center, which I guess is about a decade old. It is wonderful, with exhibits, a cafe, gift shop and more. You take a tram up to the top of the mountain, where things started to look more familiar.

Below is the front door, where the tour started.

We wandered the grounds a little bit while waiting for our time to tour the interior of the house. No pictures were allowed while you were inside, ostensibly because many of the items inside were on loan from a variety of entities, and visual rights to all those items from all those sources was not established. Very worth it anyway.

The back has a large lawn, and one of the wings coming off of each side can be seen to the left of the house.

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Wildlife and Water Lines

Early to mid-June 2019

Since the Solomons Island Calvert Marina area was somewhat rustic there was a lot of wildlife. The marina itself was once the site of the first amphibious landing base, rapidly created during WW2, training many of the folks who applied their new skills in Normandy, and coincidentally, the Solomons Islands in the Pacific. Some of the facilities may be newly painted but original.

After we arrived we saw a fox that had just had kits, then saw a nutria (or a pudgy woodchuck?). Since it was our first day it didn't strike us as unusual so we didn't take pictures, but then we didn't see them again all month.  Days later we saw deer across the road, and daily we saw lots of Canadian Geese.

A nesting box had been built atop a pole at the foot of our dock, currently inhabited by some sort of bird of prey with a four foot wingspan and one or two little ones. She didn't like me taking pictures, expressing her displeasure with a high pitched keening sound.

I'm thinking the picture below, taken at the base of the pole, is of a woodchuck. I'm honestly not sure, because I don't really ever recall seeing a woodchuck in person before, zoo or otherwise. We're not used to these cat to dog sized mammals that are not cats or dogs running around.

One evening we were a little bit lazy, and we had gotten into the bad habit in Brunswick of just pushing a full trash bag into the cockpit to be walked to the dumpster on our next foray from the boat. Not really an Alice's Restaurant kind of situation, but enough for said local wildlife to open a pop-up buffet while we slept below.

Over the next few days we hit up a local Tractor Supply still looking for gangway options that weren't $2k and in Ft. Lauderdale. We had a late lunch at a Cafe Rio of all places before grocery shopping. Those mormons get around. I really like the mormon angle in the Expanse TV series.

I swapped out the heat exchanger anode (right) for only the second time. Despite a similar amount of time having passed it looked much different than the first (left). I'll have to keep an eye on this. We rarely had the 10 pound zinc fish hanging while we were traveling, and we were hooked up to several dock power pedestals of questionable condition.

The next day the water pressure pump kept cycling on unexpectedly. It looked like a leak in the forward head. The original cold water line finally gave out after the last work done, with a slight crack at the end spraying a tiny stream of water. I hadn't cut it back because it was just barely long enough as it was and we were in the middle of nowhere at the time. The original tubing was now two decades old and really stiff, very hard to push onto the barb. Off I went again to West for some supplies, then spliced some clear reinforced hose at the end after cutting back the old hose a few inches. The day after that the water pump was cycling again. The hot line was leaking a little now, but I tightened up the hose clamps some more and that seemed to finally be it.

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