Three Treats

The Skyline Drive through Shenandoah National Park is the northern extension of the Blue Ridge Parkway, and we did this stretch on a fine, sunny day, although it was partly overcast while we were up in the mountains. It's strange that these two roads are managed separately, although both by the National Park Service. The Skyline Drive even has a "toll", strictly a park entry fee, while the Parkway is free.

The views of the Shenandoah River valley on the west side of the ridge are panoramic, although a little bit hazy due to pollution even during winter. There was even less private traffic (virtually none) on the Skyline Drive than there was on the Parkway, possibly because it's through a wider National Park and does not have private property either side of the road, although we did see a number of service vehicles.

We took a side trip to New Market (lots of Civil War battlefields here) to visit another of Virginia's covered bridges. This one you can still drive over! It was called Meem's Bottom, after a landowning family nearby. It's quite a photogenic bridge and its inside structure
(single span Burr arch truss) is fascinating [photo]. The current bridge is a reconstruction, having been burned by vandals in 1976, and like other covered bridges, it now sits on concrete piers and steel beams. The Meem's bridge predecessors were burned in 1862 in the Civil War by the Confederate Army, and its replacement was washed away in a flood.

After the excursion to the Shenandoah valley, we raced back to Charlottesville to visit the home of Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, hence the writer of those famous words "all men are created equal" and have a right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". He obviously did not practice what he preached, because he operated the surrounding tobacco plantation using slave labour. Even though he condemned slavery, he participated in it.

Jefferson was a great philosopher but also a self taught architect, and he designed his home, "Monticello". We did a tour of the building [photo]. It's unfortunate that no photographs are allowed inside, because the house features magnificent European design, and some extraordinary innovations. Jefferson was not an inventor, but he freely adopted others' ideas to great effect in his house. The house has some skylights, double glazing, a fascinating built-in pendulum clock that he designed himself (the weights have to pass through a hole in the floor), dumb waiters for wine bottles built into the side of fireplaces, a turntable servery for food coming into the dining room, so that doors do not have to be opened (letting a draught in), double doors linked with underfloor bicycle chains etc. Possible the greatest innovation is a device used by Jefferson to make copies of all his writing (something like a pantograph?) - the first copying machine?

Jefferson's wife died in childbirth at a young age. He had one daughter with his wife, but it had long been rumoured that he fathered several children with one of his slaves. Jefferson never acknowledged this, but it has apparently been recently been confirmed using DNA analysis, and we note that photos of these children at Monticello are now accorded the surname "Jefferson".