The Second Court House or Miserly with the Miles

The continuing ramblings about my journey from Little Rock, Arkansas to Portland, Maine and back again, up to attend my wonderful niece’s wedding in the Portland City Hall and Court House and then back. I chose to drive, first up there with my nephew Dakota and then back again with wife, daughter and her boyfriend Fin. I did so mainly because I like to see things I’ve not seen before and this is the best way… well aside from some form of astral projection, a skill I have not yet attained, despite my many efforts of sitting in the humid summer heat. For the previous adventures, refer to the 5 posts below.

We got up in Gettysburg Pennsylvania pretty early and headed out to the Gettysburg battlefield. For those not familiar with it, this was a fairly large engagement between the Union and Confederate forces in the American Civil War. Some 175,000 men came to blows, and about 54,000 suffered wounds or worse. I’ve read about this battle several times, from several different angles but never quite grasped the size of country it covered. It sprawled over several long ridges and over wide, open fields, through forests and small clefts and round topped hills. We followed the driving tour and hit all the main spots. It took hours. I can only imagine if one did the tour proper. We stopped by the state monuments and were stunned by the beauty and scope of them. What struck me most was the sheer beauty of the fields the battle took place on. Deep green graces of many hues, some manicured, some wild nestled between long split-rail fences, small copses of trees, old homes of red brick and white clap board. It must of have looked very similar on those hot days in July.

After several hours, we left the battlefield and cut cross country to Chambersburg and caught our trail south on 81. We drove for a good while, entering the Shenandoah Valley.  This broad swath of hills and dales, valleys and rivers is a site to behold. Passing through it leaves an impression of forgotten desires, not primeval and wild but somehow sedentary, with old wisdom.

We stopped for lunch at Cracker Barrel as Fin had heard many things about it (he’s an Englishman) and wanted to give it a go. I interrupted my cheeseburger marathon with some fried chicken, or vegetables that cluck as I like to call it and beans. Good, but not very satisfying. Chicken, like fish or turkey, always leaves one thinking that the meal is yet to be. It’s like the half-formulated memory of better times, when food was good and plentiful, but now, it’s just chicken.

Fin wanted to see Lynchburg as some of his people settled there at some point and while looking at the map Rachel spied Appomattox Court House and it seemed a good time to see this monumental spot. We veered off the interstate at Lexington onto 501 and took the road south and east. We figured it would be a quick jog over there. We were wrong. 501 snakes its way through the Blue Ridge Mountains like a crazy string gone wild. It climbs long, tall hills, winds down into deep valleys, follows switch backs, and doubles around on itself in countless places. The forests here are deep, dark and grow up the steep hills in a seemingly impenetrable hedge with no end. The rain that picked up in Lynchburg only added to the dark greens, turning them gray in rising patches of mist.

Time and distance played us hard and the rain blotted out dusk’s light. I picked up speed hoping to get to the Court House (the second of this journey) before sunset, thinking that was when it closed. We picked up 460 and after a short spell pulled into the national park only to find it closed. They locked the gates at 5 pm, an hour earlier. That didn’t stop us from poking around a bit and pushing the borders to get a glimpse of the spot that General Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to General Grant, essentially ending the Civil War. I was curious to see the house owned by a man who moved there to get away from the war, after his first home was rattled by the opening salvos at First Bull Run in 1861, only to see the war end in his parlor. But it was not be. The park curator was eating a well-deserved meal of beans and hard tack no doubt and didn’t need disturbed by meandering Arkansans and Englishmen.

We took off, after a brief attempt at different angles (our attempt to find different roads in) and headed back up 460 to Roanoke Virginia and Interstate 81. The skies opened up at that point and we realized the front above us was stalled and the rain would continue unabated. I drove as fast as safety would allow, hoping to close on the interstate before dark. Succeeding at that, we pushed on for a while until the battering rain grew worse, visibility dropped, hunger set in and sleep beckoned.

With no regrets we realized we’d managed to cover a miserly few hundred miles in our journey home, leaving a whole lot of miles untread. But I’ve always found that miles untread keep tonight as well as tomorrow, and you’ll find little sense in tackling them before the after. Best to get some sleep.

Today’s trek will be a long haul, from Christiansburg to Little Rock, as work and the Kickstarter  beckons, the kickstarter and the completion of this particular journey lies, with luck, before the evening sun sets.