The Blue Whale and Other Travel Tales: Lynne and Molly's Trip--Day 3--Downtown Winchester and the Effect of Irene

Leaving our hosts' home we headed back to Old Town Winchester. We had seen signs for a pedestrian mall. The lady I spoke to the evening before had told me the Masonic Lodge was on this mall. The whole mall is very old and very historic.

I had a lot of interest in this Masonic Lodge room. It is almost personal to me. During THE War (American Civil War, War Between the States) the Town of Winchester, Virginia changed hands Yankee to Confederate and back again some fifty or more times (most of the townies say it is over seventy time). Churches, the Masonic Lodge, houses, stores were used as hospitals, prisoner of war holding pens, etc. Lt. Col. Homer Sprague, my great grandfather's lieutenant colonel of the 13th Connecticut Infantry Volunteers was captured at Opequon (Opequan) or Third Winchester. Before being sent to Libby prison, he was temporarily held in the Masonic Lodge room. He was a Connecticut Mason.

Other historical opportunities in that Lodge Room are that George Washington once presided there and President William McKinley was initiated, passed and raised there in three days before he eventually transferred to his home state of Ohio.

We missed it our first trip through, but found it on our retrun.

The old Court House, now a museum, was also both a hospital and a prison holding area. It was a very picturesque building.

There are many old houses. One of the oldest is on the property of the Presbyterian Church. When they made their last expansion, they left the neat old stone house.

Restaurants, cafes and coffee houses abound along with lots of artsy places. Lynne again needed her morning Joe. So, we went into the Espresso Bar. She ordered her regular lotsa-word latte. But today she wanted it hot. We told the barrister the story of the day before. She got a good laugh over it. We also bought delicious scones for a mere $1.00. The barrister got it correct!! Surprise! Surprise!

Eventually, we returned to our car and back to the highway. Our next stop was to be Harrisburg for me to see yet again another capitol (separate posting). The drive to Harrisburg was easy. Coming off I-81 one follows the north side if the Susquehanna River. The entire drive is park-like with no houses between the road and the river. Very pretty drive.

Lynne's grandparents had lived in Harrisburg in a row house. Grampa had worked for the railroad. It was an easy walk to work. Lynne remembered crossing a very big bridge in her youth (it got so much smaller than it had been). Lynne did not exactly identify her grandparents home, but narrowed it down. The area was no longer blue collar, but in great despair and disrepair. She did not want to stop. It was a rather fearful neighborhood.

Then we thought we would go to the governor's house a mile or two away. That too was in a neighborhood that one time was middle class, but like many inner city neighborhoods was also in disrepair. The governor's mansion had high fences and lots of guards. It turned out to be open only during extremely limited portions of four months, of which August was not one of them.

Floating back to I-81 we continued to our next destination in eastern Pennsylvania not far from the Delaware River. We talked to our hosts, who told us that they did not have power from downed trees from Irene. But they had a generator that lighted their kitchen, living room, bedroom. He had jerry-rigged it so that the room in which we stayed also had lights.

We were early so that we thought we would find some touristy thing in which we could waste time. Either the places for which we were looking were not open or Tomasina Tom Tom did us bad with strange directions. We finally went to TGI Friday's for dinner. We split an order of spinach dip and a wonderful pasta that had fresh tomatoes, a balsamic vinegar sauce with grilled chicken. CHICKEN, more chicken. What am I thinking! But, boy was it good.

Tomasina Tom Tom brought us to the general area of our hosts' home, but told us we had arrived about a half mile too early. So, we had to call them yet again. It seems that Tomasina brought us in from the opposite direction from which people usually arrive. We found a tree still over the wires really close to their house.

Dale and Ita have a large home on four acres and backs up to the local tennis courts. Very convenient as he likes to play. She is from the Netherlands. Her house has many Dutch touches. Their grounds were meticulous and the gardens gorgeous. Irene, however, had taken down some trees in their yard which they had not yet been able to remove (Irene had only gone through a day or so earlier). We toured their grounds with excitement (especially Lynne who is an avid gardener). They had many very unusual botanic specimens.