...thoughts expressed here are not necessarily final.

October 18-22, 2004 News from the journey- a vacation diary...

Sunday was spent at Eagle Heights, Mom's church. They were having a prospective pastor back for the third time. He was a good preacher. I could tell he had some experience and he would fit into an effective role in the community. His demeanor and the way he handled himself made him likeable. His straightforward delivery of the sin message set the stage well for his gospel presentation. I like him. Come to find out, he and his wife were at the Fall seminary preview as well.

Monday we headed off and ended up in Lexington, Virginia. We did a lot of talking and processing of the information we had gathered at the seminary preview last week.

The trees were gorgeous in West Virginia after we got out of the Charleston area.

We stopped at Tamarack, a visitors' center/eatery/crafts bazaar combo. It was pricy and touristy (doh) but the food was good.

They also had live artisans doing their thing which I always enjoy. Here is an example of glassblowing, which I want to try some day. When it comes to artisans, Ialways prefer the live ones.

On Tuesday we went to Virginia Beach for the Day. It was mild and eighty degrees, a bit warmer than what we prepared for, so Earnie had to purchase some short pants. Go figure. that amounts to standard procedure for the Fosters...

We ate at Ocean Eddie's on the oceanfront and the fish and shrimp were excellent!

In the afternoon we went to the Hamptons's Naval Museum in Newport News. We visited the USS Wisconsin, which is docked there. That is the first time I had been aboard an Iowa class destroyer. We drove back to Williamsburg that evening to prepare for our visit there. We tried to name all of the presidents in order on our trip back, and we did pretty good, but not perfect. We missed Grover Cleveland. :-( Nobody else does...

We spent the day in a drizzling rain at Williamsburg. I asked one of the guides whether it rained in 1774 and he said yes, that they did this to be authentic :-) They succeeded! I think I want to build a muzzle loader long rifle.

We enjoyed the glass armonica concert in the theater. Dean Shostak is one of eight people in the world who is a glass armonica player.

We toured many of the buildings, but the best part for me was a visit to the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum where they had an extraordinary exhibit of colonial era maps called Degrees of Latitude. They had several of the original maps that I have high quality reproductions of, including the Robert de Vaugony and Thomas Jeffrys and Fry maps of colonial Virginia. The exhibit has an online component here. Flash plug in required!

I, of course was looking for Foster's Creek and found it on several maps that showed Louisa County from the 1750's . Foster's Creek empties into the South Anna River. That is the place from which my Fosters came to Bullitt County in the 1780's; Bu;litt County, Kentucky, is where I was born seven generations later.

Williamsburg is wonderful, but the fact that it is partially open to modern teriffic sort of impinges upon the experience. One might be enjoying a reconstructed site and suddenly college students from William and Mary jog on through, or one might encounter a traffic jam on the perimeter streets that run through the area. If you are looking for more authenticity, I think the Pleasant Hill village at Shakertown does it better. I am a bit biased because I have a Granny buried there. Ask me how that works.

The most important thing was to get a sense of where our country has been in order to get some perspective in this election year. The campaigns of today are largely ad hominem attacks , not debates of issues. We hear what candidates are for but not why. The founding fathers were much more eloquent in articulating what they were about than modern day politicians.

We drove on to Waynesboro for the evening and the next morning explored the Virginia Horse Center. Much of our trip, we were doing reconnaisance for future visits. Note that we opted for our jackets by this time of the trip- I am modelling one of the snazzy Southern Seminary hats that were in short supply.

On the ride home, we read from Piper's new book How to Fight for Joy which was very edifying. Highly recommended reading!

On Friday we made it to Mom's in time to watch the Cards beat the Astros for the pennant. I expect to return to raging red fever when we get home! We had been following this on the road so most evenings in the hotels were spent with the tube on. That is very different in itself for us. Even Earnie got excited on this one! Here is a link to an essay by Bruce Edwards, who is the instructor for the online Chronicles of Narnia course I am participating in. Bruce is an Astros fan par excellence! I will have to catch up a bit on the course when i get home, but I did have time to finish Prince Caspian and the Voyage of the Dawn Treader while vacating.

October 22, 2004 Home again, home again!

Made it home and the place was not like a jungle as I feared; the cooler temperatures prevented that in spite of the rain. We are off today for Earnie's High School reunion then back tonight so we can be in church tomorrow. What a trip! I will have to go back to work Monday to recuperate!