Peru Trip 2012 -- Part One

The journey is difficult, immense. We will travel as far as we can, but we cannot in one lifetime see all that we would like to see or to learn all that we hunger to know.   

--- Loren Eiseley

STARTING OUT

We began our ‘trek’ to Peru on January 11^th. I picked Jill up about 3:30 and we headed off to St. Louis. The weather was OK but they were predicting light snow for the morning. We stopped at an IHOP restaurant in St. Charles and then went to our motel…a Best Western by the airport that offers free travelers’ parking in a covered garage. The motel was fine and we had to get up very early so we went to bed early….but couldn’t sleep.

We got up at 3 AM and got ready for the shuttle to the airport. It was snowing and very windy with ice patches on the road and sidewalks. Our shuttle picked us up at 4:15 and we were at the airport in about five minutes. Our plane was leaving about 6 AM so we went through security and got to the gate in plenty of time. We packed very light for this trip and only had to check one suitcase. All together we had two backpacks, the suitcase and a couple other small personal bags. We boarded the plane and sat on the tarmac for almost 45 minutes while they de-iced the plane. I’d never seen that done and it is a time consuming process, especially in a 30 mph wind. It was after 6:30 before we finally took off. The flight to Miami was uneventful. The moon was out once we were above the clouds. We flew over the gulf and passed over Sarasota when we reached land again. We were on the ground by 11 AM.

In Miami we had to go from the D concourse to the J concourse and that meant a long walk to a different terminal. We managed to get some bad directions before we finally got going the right way. We had a long layover in Miami. The LAN flight to Lima didn’t leave until 5 PM so we took our time. It turned out that we didn’t have boarding passes (although the paper said “boarding pass” on the top) so we had to go back to the LAN counter to get our passes. There was a long line…maybe 50 or 60 people in line…and they had tons of luggage. Some of the people had five or six large suitcases that were big enough to hold all of our stuff. It took forever for the line to move and it stopped for about twenty minutes entirely while one of the workers left to go home and had to say goodbye to each of the other workers. Nobody did anything while she gave out her hugs and handshakes and went from station to station. Amazingly, everyone in line just stood there and fidgeted while this took place. We finally got our correct boarding passes and moved on.  We had to go through security again and then stopped to get something to eat for lunch. We finally got to our gate in concourse J with a several hours to spare. Long layovers are incredibly boring and this one was really boring. People watching is OK for a while but even that gets old. As 5 o’clock came around it was clear that nothing was happening and finally we heard that there was a weather problem in Lima that would delay our take off in Miami. We noticed that other flights to Lima – Delta or American Airlines – were taking off on time. We were just getting antsy and wanted to get on our way. We also had people waiting for us at the Lima airport and no way to let them know we would be late. Our plane finally got off the ground about an hour late. The problem in Lima was sea fog at the airport.

We were tired and too anxious to really enjoy the on-board movies or games. The flight to Lima is only about 5 ½ hours…shorter than our layover. They fed us and we had pillows and blankets. At least we were on our way. It was an uneventful flight and we landed about midnight. Baggage and customs was easy and we found our reception folks from the travel company without any problem.

LIMA – FIRST TIME

We were soon on our way to the hotel – Casa Andina San Antonio – Miraflores – but it was a little distance and traffic was busy. We drove along the Pacific Ocean for a while and then climbed up to the top of the cliffs to the Miraflores district and found our hotel. The travel folks gave us some material and instructions and helped us check in. Apparently, no one drinks water from the tap in Peru…everyone uses bottled water for everything including brushing teeth. They said that ice for drinks is OK. Don’t eat lettuce salads because they wash the lettuce in tap water. Fruit or vegetables that are peeled are OK to eat.

Our hotel room was small and had a window out into the stairwell and interior courtyard. The bathroom had a half-sized bath tub. We collapsed in the beds which were very comfortable. When we made arrangements with the travel company we said we wanted mid-level hotels – comfort level but not luxury. Casa Andina is a chain of hotels in Peru that fit that description – nothing fancy but everything was adequate.

We had to get up early on Friday to catch a flight to Cusco. We had another exposure to Lima’s traffic on our way back to the airport. We were taking Star Peru airlines to Cusco….a small domestic company. The plane was small but the flight was fine. They passed out snacks which I should not have eaten but I did.

CUSCO

We were met at Cusco by another travel rep who drove us to the hotel – Casa Andina San Blas – a very nice and comfortable hotel. We had a cup of Coca Mate tea while we were checking in to help with the extreme altitude. Cusco is over 11,000 feet. Our second-floor room was small but bright with windows open to the sunny courtyard. The bathroom was also nice with a full tub. We rested for a while trying to get used to the high altitude.

We were scheduled for an afternoon city tour of Cusco and our guide, Ignacio, showed up right on time. We were joined by a couple from Taiwan and headed out in the van to see Cusco. Our first stop was at San Cristobal church on a hill overlooking Cusco. We had a good view of the city and there were some local people there with llamas and full Andean regalia ready for pictures. The church is built on the site of an old Inca palace so we got to see our first precision stonework. We would see a great deal more. In Cusco, almost every street in the old town has some Inca features.

Our second stop was the Cusco city market. This is a huge building full of vendor stalls and crowded with people buying everything from bottled water to fruit and vegetables, handmade weaving, bread, cheese, clothes, toys, tea and coffee, chocolate, artwork and almost anything else that someone would need. They have a Ceviche vendor selling a variety of citrus-marinated raw fish. Ceviche is the national dish of Peru and is available at most restaurants in some form or another.

From the market we went to tour the Convento de Santo Domingo, also known as Coricancha. The convent is built over the foundation of an Inca temple complex. Parts of the temples were preserved as part of the convent. There are three temples inside the convent incorporated as part of the courtyard. The main building is built on top of the foundation for the major temple of the sun. The stonework is over 500 years old and looks almost new. The stones are so precisely cut that they don’t have any mortar holding them together and they have withstood several very large earthquakes that destroyed many of the later Spanish-built structures. The San Cristobal church that we visited earlier was destroyed three times but the Inca walls behind it were undamaged.

Our next stop was the Cathedral of Santo Domingo (the Cusco Cathedral). And Ignacio, our guide, was very well informed on just about every nook and cranny of the place. It is actually three churches…the main cathedral is flanked by two smaller churches but they are open to each other through several interior doors. The various altars date to the 1600s and are often in solid gold or silver. The paintings are very noteworthy and some are attributed to artists of the “Cusco School” of art. Some have both Christian and Inca features. The painting of the Last Supper has a cooked guinea pig on the table. Some of the carved statues were made by local Indian craftsman and carved from agave wood. We were not allowed to take pictures in the three churches but they were very beautiful. Side altars were very impressive and were dedicated to various saints. There is also a large crucifix with a black Christ that has been stained by candle and incense smoke over the centuries. Some of the altar pieces and saint images are carried outside during religious festivals.

After the Cathedral we went up to the San Blas plaza area, which is known as an artist district. We stopped off in a couple shops and met an artist who is still working in traditional styles. There was also a gallery/museum dedicated to an artist who made carved statues with exceptionally long necks.

By this time it was getting late in the afternoon and we headed back to our hotel, which was only a couple blocks away from San Blas plaza. We settled in for a while and then headed back to San Blas for supper at a restaurant called Pacha Papa. We were warned against eating too much at such a high altitude so we decided to have an appetizer and then a dessert. I had Quinoa Tabbouleh and Jill had roasted potatoes in butter and herb sauce. I ordered a beer and was asked if I wanted small or medium. I said medium but it was a huge Cusquena beer…a locally brewed lager beer…big enough for two people. We had great desserts including some wonderful cinnamon ice cream. We headed back to the hotel and went to bed.

THE BUG

At 2 AM I was sick with food poisoning. I had been feeling a little funny before we went for supper so I have to assume that it came from the snack they passed out on the airplane. The snack included a roll that has some kind of chicken salad inside of it and I bit into it and ate a little bit before I decided not to eat any more. That was just enough to make me sick. I managed OK if I just didn’t move in the bed but even that was not enough after a while. I hit the Imodium until I couldn’t take any more and then I switched over to Pepto Bismal tablets. The alarm went off and Jill got up in time to meet our guide for the day’s tour. It was a half-day tour to Sacsayhuaman and other archeological sites close to Cusco.  I would have liked to go along but I was in no condition to leave the room. I stayed in bed until about 10 AM and slowly got up and tested myself. The situation had improved and I was beginning to feel like I was going to be OK. I was really sick for about eight hours but when it was over I started to bounce back. Jill came back from her tour before noon and we began to think about what we would do for the afternoon that we had free.

PLAZA DE ARMAS

This was Saturday and I had made arrangements on our city tour to go back to one of the shops and buy an Alpaca woven scarf. I tried to pay for it using my credit card but the clerk was not familiar enough with the credit card machine to make it work so I had to come back with cash. We walked to the shop and got that taken care of and then walked down to the Plaza de Armas, about five blocks. We took some pictures and found a bench to sit on while we watched the people in the plaza.  It is a pretty lively place. There were a couple kids who were brought down to feed the pigeons. The kids had a great time throwing bird seed and running after the birds. There was a wedding at the Cathedral and the bride and groom came out into the plaza to have some pictures taken by the fountain. They posed with tow little kids who must have been in the wedding party and the littlest one decided to wash his face in the fountain so he was pretty wet by the time they got the pictures taken. The wedding was very traditional and the bride and groom were roped together with an extra-large rosary called a Lazo.

We decided to get lunch somewhere and found an English pub …the Cross Keys Pub…just off the plaza across from the Cathedral. We ordered a small pizza and sat out on a balcony overlooking a small alleyway. The pizza was OK but not great. The pub was advertising that they were going to have the NFL playoff games on TV and were inviting folks to come to the pub to watch. 

There were a few people in the plaza who were trying to sell postcards and various trinkets to the tourists. They were persistent if you even made eye contact or tried to be polite. The police were keeping them away from the Cathedral and there were only a few on the plaza. The kids have an interesting strategy…they ask if you want to buy postcards or whatever they have and when you say no the whine and say “why not?” like maybe we will relent if they act pitiful.  It didn’t work on us but we had the same experience in Lima later in the week.

We wandered around the streets for a while. We found the twelve sided stone in the Inca wall on one of the streets. This is a famous stone that was precisely cut to fit in a specific spot on the wall. Of course, there were people stationed near the stone trying to sell stuff. One guy, self-identified as a college student, gave us a short lecture on the stone and then pulled out his packet of photographs of Machu Picchu that were somehow significant and we surely wanted to purchase. We left him with his pictures.

We went into a few shops and bought another hand-woven scarf as a gift. Jill bought a small coin purse. They have some very nice things for sale and the prices are listed in Nuevo Soles, the Peruvian currency. Soles are worth about 42 cents so that means 100 soles is about $42. We are hit with sticker shock a little because we think in dollars. If something costs 150 soles if is really about $63 in US dollars. This was especially notable in restaurants. We frequently paid 60 or 80 soles for a meal and that sounds like a lot but it is really somewhere between $25 and $33….not too much to pay for a good dinner and the food was always good.

We wandered around and ended back at the hotel. There was some kind of music and dance performance going on at the Plaza San Blas so we watched a little of that. Later we went to a little vegetarian café we found a few blocks from the hotel. The name escaped me but the food was pretty good. I opted for spaghetti because I didn’t want to test my delicate condition. It wasn’t the best spaghetti I ever had but it was OK. The place seems to be a hot spot for backpackers or those non-Peruvians who are somehow bonded to the cosmic vortex of Cusco. One fellow in particular seemed to be a regular and the waitress seemed like he had been there maybe too often. There might be a backpacker hostel nearby – there were several Americans in the café.   We enjoyed our day…it ended better than it started.

SACRED VALLEY

Our tour for Sunday was to go up into the Sacred Valley (probably not up but down) and visit some small towns, markets, see some llamas and alpacas and visit some ruins. It was a little chaotic in the beginning because we met our van and then the van had to race across town to meet a bus that was going to take us, and about 25 other people, on the tour. Most of our tours were personal or with only one other group but this was a little busy. We got our seats on the bus and waited a few minutes until our tour guide, Janet, arrived. She was late and a little flustered but laughed it off and we were on our way. This was an English language tour but I’m not sure everyone could understand.

The bus left Cusco and went by several of the sites that I missed on the day before so I got to see some of them in passing. Jill was good at pointing them out and explaining what they were. We drove for a while and then pulled in at a small country market. They had a small corral containing llamas and alpacas and a little girl who could point out which was which. There is a lot of variation in color and coat as well as size and shape so it isn’t readily apparent which one is an alpaca and which is a llama. Llamas are generally bigger but that seems to be the main rule.  The market was run by local people and they had some really nice stuff at good prices. I bought a table runner and Jill bought some leggings and some socks.

 

Our next stop was in Pisac, a small town with a big market. As we entered the town we encountered the elected mayor of Alcalde dressed in his official “going to market” clothes and accompanied by his grandchildren. Apparently his arrival at the market is a big deal. Since it was Sunday the market was exceptionally full of vendors and buyers. Janet warned everyone to be very careful to manage our belongings because there could be pickpockets or thieves in the market. She also gave us strict instructions on how to find our way out of the market and back to the bus. Janet led the way as we plunged into the market. There were tons of produce and lots of handmade items as well as paintings and carvings. We went into a little bakery and bought empanadas for 5 soles ($2) that were filled with fruit or meat. I had one filled with apples that just came out of the oven and was very warm and very good. We went into a small art gallery/studio and bought a couple small water colors. The artist pulled out a newspaper article that showed he was a nationally recognized artist. His work was pretty good and offered a good representation of rural Peruvian village life. We found our way back to the bus without any problem and with all of our belongings.

As we drove through the countryside, it was amazing to see the terraces used in farming. Some of them were hundreds of feet up the mountain slopes. I don’t see how the local farmers can even get up to the terraces and when they do they have to work the land with hand tools. They use a crop rotation system that allows each terrace to lay fallow for seven years and they plant only on the eighth year. Each farmer has to have a number of terraces in order to feed his family.

URUBAMBA

Our next stop was Urubamba, a town located along the river of the same name (well, sometimes called the Vilcanota River but I'm sticking with the Urubamba) . This was our lunch stop and we went to a very nice hacienda style building that is a nice restaurant that offers a full buffet lunch of Peruvian food. Some of the food was identifiable. Much of the food was composed of ingredients that were identifiable but put together in different ways. I had some raw trout with white rice that resembled sushi. There was a cold marinated vegetable salad; potatoes in different forms; some red beans (tasty); roasted alpaca; some ceviche; steamed green beans; fruit and olives. Desserts included fruit tarts, flan, a cheese cake, and a mocha cake that had whole coffee beans inside. The food was very good and there was plenty of it.

We had a little free time so we walked around the grounds while a guy in an Inca costume played an amplified panpipe that was about four feet long. The ground sloped down to the river and there was a corral in the back that held a llama and a vicuna. Vicunas are endangered and this was the only place that we actually got to see one. They are quite small and look something like a young deer with thicker fur.

There were flowers everywhere. The hedge between the properties was made up of large cactuses. There were several local ladies selling handicrafts on the lawn. All of the items we saw that were for sale looked genuine…not Chinese or cheap imitations.  I didn’t expect to see as much jewelry. By the time we left I had heard about as much panpipe music as I wanted.

 OLLANTAYTAMBO

We all piled back into the bus and headed to our next stop, Ollantaytambo, a town that is considered to still be much as it was as an Inca town. This is one of the last Inca strongholds. Manco Inca Yupanqui, the Inca ruler following the invasion of the Spanish and the destruction of the Royal nobility, used the town as a fortress and defeated the Spanish in a battle at the town. The major attraction is the Inca ruins of a religious center perched above the town on a series of terraces.

Janet, our guide, shepherded the group into the archaeological site and lead the way up several hundred feet of Inca terraces. Ollantaytambo is almost 10,000 feet above sea level and it was a hard climb at that altitude. Luckily we stopped several time to rest but I don’t think I’ve ever exerted myself as much on any walk or climb. I had my walking stick (a monopod) and my knee support on but this was an exhausting climb. The terraces have been restored back to the way they were except that they are no longer irrigated. The Incas brought water from the mountain lakes and glaciers through a series of aqueducts to their agricultural terraces.

Once we climbed up to the top there was a small flat plaza area and the ruins of a religious temple. The temple stonework was as finely cut as that at the temples in Cusco. Some of the stones were so big that it seemed impossible to get them up the slope. Apparently there was a ramp built from the quarry on a nearby mountain that they used to moves the stones on log rollers. They moved rough cut stones and then finished them at the temple site. The broken rock pieces and scraps were used as fill to level the site or to help build the terraces. Some of the stonework was pre-Inca and shows that the town was in existence before the Incas conquered the area.  There was a temple wall called “the wall of the six megaliths” that had small stones inserted in the joints between the huge stones that served as expansion joints or shock absorbers for the frequent earthquakes.

Janet was trying to keep her sheep together but we were pretty much spread out and in various states of exhaustion. There was one woman that was afraid of heights and she was having a tough time. We started back down on a more gradual slope but it was still a little risky because there were no railings or things to hold on to as we went down the steps. Again, I was glad I had my walking stick.

I was very impressed with Ollantaytambo. The town was in a very defensible location and I could see that it could serve as a fortified place. Apparently the Incas could flood the fields and make them impassable for the Spaniards who always rode horses. The horses became bogged down in the mud and the soldiers became easy targets for the Inca warriors. Across the valley on the opposite slopes there were a number of store houses where the Incas stored surplus grain to help out when the crop yields were too low.

As at almost all of the places we visited there was a small market with local people selling their handicrafts or bottled water and snacks.  Ollantaytambo is the railroad terminus for the train trip to Machu Picchu. In the dry season the train begins at Cusco but during the summer rainy season the tracks are sometimes washed out or there are landslides that disrupt the train service. Keeping the tracks open from Ollantaytambo to Aguas Calientes, which is the Machu Picchu station, is a more manageable task.

CHINCHERRO

After some delay we piled back on the bus for the return trip to Cusco. We had one more stop on the way at the town of Chincherro where there was a weaving demonstration put on by a local cooperative association of weavers. The women were dressed in the local traditional clothing and they showed off how their hair braids tell what their marriage situation was. The lead weaver had two braids that were apparently broadcasting that she was living with a man but they were not officially married. The other women had different types of hair braids. It was beginning to rain so we had the weaving demonstration indoors rather that out in the open area. One of the ladies brought us cups of mint tea as refreshment.  

With Janet serving as the interpreter, the weaving demonstration covered the entire process from cleaning the alpaca wool through the various natural vegetable dyes and mordants (such as a child’s urine) to spinning and weaving the cloth. The geometric designs woven in the cloth are symbolic of various features in the locale of the weavers. Shapes and colors may represent mountains or lakes and rivers. The four women sang a little song as they were spinning the wool into yarn and it was apparently an obscene little ditty that they giggled and snickered about. Since it was in Quechua we had no idea what it was. They had a lot of weaving work available for sale but we had already bought most of what we wanted by the time we got there. The ladies came on the bus and sang another song as a goodbye gift. I was reminded once again that we had not met a single sourpuss or grumpy person on the entire trip. Even though I’m sure they didn’t sell much to the group they were very happy and pleased to have the opportunity to share their skills with the visitors.

We were soon on our way to Cusco. The bus stopped at one of the main plazas and Jill and I walked back to the San Blas area where our hotel is located.   It was sprinkling rain so we stopped off at a little café we found…Tabasco Café…which had some good Italian dishes on the menu. We wanted to get gnocchi to see what the Peruvian potatoes would be like as gnocchi but they didn’t have any made up. We settled on ravioli. Jill had meat ravioli and I had pesto ravioli. When it came it was apparently made up fresh in the kitchen. It was very good and not drenched in sauce. Food portions in all of the Peruvian restaurants were very adequate and not super-sized or wasteful like in many American restaurants.

Back at the hotel we had to repack our suitcase and backpacks because we were leaving for Machu Picchu early in the morning and we would leave all nonessential stuff at the Cusco hotel. We stuffed our suitcase so full I was afraid it would rip out the seams. In the end we had everything we needed including clothes, shoes cameras and ditty-bags crammed in our two backpacks. The train trip and bus ride limits the amount of stuff you can take with you to Machu Picchu.

Guinea Pigs - It's what's for dinner!

Kids everywhere love to feed pigeons

End of Part One

Next stop....Peru!

Yeehaa!! We start our journey to Peru on Wednesday.  Lima...Cusco...Machu Picchu. There won't be any regular postings while on the trip but lots of stuff when we get back.

This is summer in Peru but also the rainy season up at higher elevations like Cusco and Machu Picchu. Some months they get 51 inches of rain. We are prepared for rain and hope the altitude doesn't wear us out too much.

I admit I stole this from some web site but if we get to see Machu Picchu between showers it ought to be fine.  Stay tuned.

A Tropical Storm, a Wedding, and a Battlefield

...and eight states in five days.  Jill and I headed to West Chester, Pennsylvania on Thursday morning, September 8th to attend the wedding of our friends Julia and Joe at a B&B. The road trip was a little complicated by tropical storm Lee that was stalled over the mid-Atlantic states and causing tremendous flooding. We had great weather as we drove through Missouri and Illinois but it became cloudy in Indiana and we hit our first rain in Ohio. That first day of driving was fine until we hit road construction in Indiana...I guess the stimulus money is helping them redo I-70 but they have a long way to go. The parts of the highway that they were not working on was terrible and the work zones were spaced only a few miles apart. We were planning on staying in Zanesville, Ohio, which would make the second day's drive more manageable. The rain was spotty and it got dark faster than we expected.

Ohio had road construction going on as well but they seemed determined to work 24 hours a day and had guys working in the dark and drizzling rain. The workers were working without bright lights but were wearing reflective coveralls with extra reflective tape sewed on the arms and legs and each worker had a miner's lamp on their head. The traffic was slowed to about 55 mph (in theory) but it was startling to see these guys when you came up on them in the dark. I'm sure that they will probably lose somebody.

When we got to Zanesville we heard that the Pennsylvania Turnpike was closed between Harrisburg and Reading because of flooding from the tropical storm. The detour they wanted us to take would have sent us way up north and then circle around and rejoin the turnpike at Reading...adding lots of miles and a couple hours to our drive. We looked for an alternate route through York and Lancaster but it was partially closed there as well.

On Friday morning the situation had improved and we were able to take the turnpike as we had originally planned. That turned out to be sort of a white-knuckle drive in some spots because of water pouring onto the highway and a few small mudslides. Water was rushing under the bridges with only a foot to spare. From what we could see, this looked like a pretty drive in good weather.

We were impressed with West Chester. It is a pretty town only about a half-hour outside of Philadelphia and fairly close to the Delaware border. It is an old town with lots of classic homes and also the site of West Chester University, a state university with about 14,000 students. From what we could tell on Friday night WCU is a party school but the town seems to be a party town. The old business district is full of restaurants and bars, brewpubs, a wine bar, and bunches of shops. There seems to be a lot of money flowing in.

Faunbrook Inn

The wedding was at the 1860 Faunbrook Inn where many of the guests stayed along with the bride and groom. As you may have guessed, this was a tiny wedding by most peoples' standards and was very laid back...even more so than mine and I thought ours was laid back. This wedding was seemingly planned in advance to be very unstressed but I'm sure there was some stress involved.

The Inn is very impressive. It was the home of a local millionaire (William Baldwin) in the 1860s and then passed to Congressman Smedley Darlington, a local mover and shaker, GOP politician and (of course) oilman. The house is Federal-Italianate with three floors and a large wrap-around porch with ornamental ironwork. There is a large parlor, library, dining room and sitting room/bar on the first floor and bedrooms on the second and third floors.

The rooms were spacious and furnished with antiques. Each room had a private bath. The house was extremely quiet considering that it was 150 years old. Apart from the sound of someone using the stairs you could not hear anything from the rest of the house...not even water running or toilets flushing. People seemed comfortable in the library. The porch was also very inviting since the weather was mild and the first floor windows and doors were open. There were large windows in the parlor that converted into doors so people could drift in and out as they pleased..

The breakfasts were excellent - French Toast strata with apples, berries and cream, apple-flavored sausage, scrambled eggs, juice and coffee...that was day 1. Day 2 was just as good and included an extra sample of the local "Scrapple" which is apparently a Pennsylvania thing -- sort of a sausage made up of butchering leftovers that tasted like bland sausage mixed with sawdust. Must be an acquired taste. We managed to polish it all off. Although the wedding party made up most of the guests, there were two couples who were staying at the inn and attending the local mushroom festival...the area is apparently the capital of mushroom hunting in the US. We seemed to keep them amused.

The Wedding

The wedding was set for 4 PM on Saturday in the garden on a brick patio next to the porch. The garden has a natural look to it but sort of a faded glory feel as if it was there when the inn was built. This gave sort of a laid back atmosphere to the wedding. Since it was a small wedding, only about 15 guests, the garden setting was perfect. Being a destination wedding, a lot of the details had to fall in place at the last minute and it all came off as planned. It couldn't have worked out any better.

The reception was at a local restaurant called Limoncello Ristorante in the town. The food and service were excellent -- this was an 'off the menu' dinner and everyone had different selections. I tried a porcini mushroom stuffed pasta with tomato-cream sauce. Jill had the gnocchi. Julia had mussels in pasta and Anna had a special risotto dish. We ended the dinner with a limoncello toast to the bride and groom and then went back to the Inn for cake and some wine and a few toasts and speeches. We were getting tired but managed to have a game of trivial pursuit before everyone drifted off to bed.

Brandywine Valley -- Baldwin's Book Barn and Victory Brewery...

The Book Barn is a five story barn built in 1822 by the Darlington family (remember Smedley?) that was converted into a book store 75 years ago by William Baldwin (must be the son of the guy that built the Inn). It's only a short distance south of the Faunbrook Inn. A person could spend a weekend just roaming around in the stacks. Books are arranged by categories, more or less, and then shelved by author, more or less. The special first editions and rare books are on the first floor. Apparently they sell books by the foot. You can purchase refurbished leather-bound books at $300 per foot for your executive library...if you have one.  We spent about an hour wandering around. I like Joseph Conrad and got a couple  of his novels.

Victory Brewing Company is in Downingtown a few miles north of West Chester. The brewery is in an old Pepperidge Farm bakery and distributing facility which provided ample room for the brewing operation and a large brewpub. We had lunch and most of the group tried a sample of several beers. I tasted a couple and got a pint of Strangeways Ale -- a cream ale that reminded me of Boddingtons. The brewery is very popular in Philadelphia and they are beginning to market some of their beer outside of the region.

Heading Home -- Gettysburg National Battlefield

Our route home was to include a stop at the Gettysburg National Battlefield. The route took us through Lancaster, Pennsylvania -- a location known as the center of Amish culture...but we didn't see any except for a lot full of horse buggies -- either for sale or being repaired. Lancaster seemed just like every other Pennsylvania town. Driving through town we had to stop briefly on the highway because traffic stopped to allow four ducklings to cross the road -- you don't see that every day.

We got lunch in Gettysburg town. The place is immersed in Civil War stuff. Every block has a shop or two selling antiques or relics from the Civil War. They are flying off the shelf faster than they can make them. Visitors can pick their favorite General and eat at a restaurant named after him. I had a BLT at the Warren Cafe - as in General Warren.

We stopped in briefly at the Gettysburg Battlefield visitors' center. We were visiting on September 11th -- the ten year anniversary of the terror attacks -- and as a result there were very few people visiting. This might also be related to the flooding and bad weather that plagued the area during the week. We roamed through the gift shop and picked up a guide map and planned our visit.

The national cemetery covers much of the area on the north edge of the battlefield close to town. There are hundreds of unknown soldier burials and places where each state's soldiers are buried together. Larger memorials are placed by different states for their own soldiers. As recently as 1997 they were still finding soldiers remains on the battlefield and burying them in the cemetery. The large soldier's monument is the site of Lincoln's Gettysburg address at the dedication of the cemetery.

It is strange how we memorialize battlefields. The Generals get the monuments and the soldiers get the graves. The various monuments were placed on the battlefield in the years after the war and they are positioned as close as possible to where the events took place. There must have been detailed investigations and surveys taken to document the battlefield and troop movements to support placement of the monuments. The monuments are a little intrusive in viewing the battlefield and trying to imagine how it was at the time. 

   

We followed part of the driving tour past the site of Pickett's Charge and "The Angle". There were a few other visitors and an occasional tour bus but it was not crowded. We went past the Peach Orchard and the Wheat Field and climbed to the top of Little Round Top to get a good view of the battlefield and Devils Den just below. The entire battlefield is very large but some of the famous battlefield sites seem very compact and in close proximity. I expected some of them to be larger based on the accounts of the battle. 

   

This battle must have been a very chaotic event stretched over three days. Some areas of the battlefield were fought over multiple times with each army holding it for a while. Soldiers moving across the battlefield would have encountered bodies of soldiers killed during earlier attacks and probably wondered why they kept fighting over the same piece of a farmer's field. It would take at least a full day to see the whole battlefield and try to get an understanding of what took place and how it all ended.  

From Gettysburg we headed south into Maryland and picked up the interstate near Hagerstown and continued into West Virginia. The mountains in WV were pretty but the weather turned rainy again for a while and then we had to deal with patches of fog. We finally got into Charleston and stopped for supper at a Bob Evans around 9 PM. The highway into Kentucky was almost empty. There was some impressive lightening and we began to get a little worried about more rain but it held off.  We got a little anxious when we passed an electronic sign near Lexington that said that I-64 -- our highway -- was closed ahead.  We finally got to Louisville around 1:30 AM and staggered into our motel and had collapsed in our beds by 2 AM.

We slept late and on checking out of the motel learned that the I-64 bridge over the Ohio River was closed because it was unsafe...even unsafe for pedestrians. We were rerouted around Louisville but eventually reconnected to I-64 and continued through Indiana and Illinois. We had lunch in Mount Vernon and then got home around 5 PM.

Eight states in five days...a tropical storm...a wedding...a battlefield. It was a good trip.

Herding Cats?

This is the year I decided to be more spontaneous. I decided to say "Yes" more often than "No" and I'm quite pleased with the outcome.  Earlier in the summer I was invited to go to the Lake of the Ozarks for a few days with some friends and, since this is the new me, I said "Yes" and then pretty much forgot about it and went on with my summer. I suddenly realized last week that the trip was coming up - this week.

This was a group of twelve (mostly) retired folks and ten of them were related and just finished a family reunion over the weekend. Jeanne and I were the only non-relatives but we fit in okay. I was a little apprehensive. The last time I went on a trip with a large number of people we ended up being stranded in a houseboat on Bull Shoals lake in a three-day rain storm...we stayed inside and watched cooking shows.

This time the weather had been just awful up until the day we left. Temperatures were nearly 100 and the humidity was way too high and heat advisories had been posted for weeks. We had a severe storm on Sunday but the aftermath was cooler temperatures and low humidity -- almost resort weather for our trip. The cool weather lasted all week with only a short rain one night and a couple wandering thunder showers that missed us.

The lake house was very nice and had three floors and three decks. It would sleep about twenty so we had plenty of room. Like most lake-area rentals there were a lot of rules and regulations but nothing too outrageous. It was built into the slope and was shaded by large trees so it was hard to get a good picture of it. The rental expense was in the neighborhood of $2000 but divided up twelve ways it was manageable.

The place also had a very nice dock but we didn't have a boat at our disposal. Sometimes going out on the lake would have been pretty risky if we were not well prepared and experienced. One day there were two small "tug boats" pushing a large dock up toward the back of the cove. Jet skis were everywhere. We were very much at the business end of the lake at mile marker #2 so things were a little crazy at times and as noisy as the interstate.  During the calmer intervals some of us tried to fish off of the dock. I was the only one catching anything and my four little blue gills plus a can of tuna could have made a standard portion of tuna helper. By Wednesday and Thursday the lake was pretty calm and quiet.

So what did we do? Mostly it was talk, drink, eat, talk, eat, talk, drink, drink, talk, talk, sleep -- and then the next day we did it again with some variation. You learn a lot about a group of people in this setting and I enjoyed it all. I don't recall the TV being on much at all. I took my laptop but didn't turn it on. We watched the lake and just visited and relaxed. Some of the group came from Florida and Texas and Kansas so there was a good amount of just catching up with what was going on. Trying to get an agreement on what we were going to do was a challenge just because you had to get every one's attention at the same time. Herding cats was one good description. Meals were casual, especially breakfast, and people wandered in and out at their own pace. Some napped. Some fished. It was really pretty relaxing.

I won't describe the decision process but we decided to get into several cars and go to a couple wineries. Seven Springs Winery is west on US 54 near Linn Creek. We enjoyed the selection that they had for tasting ($7 for 10 samples plus the wine glass) and several bottles of wine were bought. This seems to be a new place and it caters to the lake visitors. There was a nice picnic area and a covered patio and a restaurant --and apparently some ambitious plans.  They have some grapes planted but the vines seem to be about a year old.

We also went to Casa de Loco Winery, located west of Camdenton and not too far from Hahatonka State Park. In fact, the original building was a hunting lodge built in the 1920s and was part of the original "Castle" estate. The place went through a few hands and eventually became a state mental health group home and then came into private hands as a winery. It is on a bluff overlooking the Niangua River and very hard to find...get directions and follow them because you will be tempted to turn back...but don't.

The owner/vintner has this Missouri winery and some local vineyards but he also has at least one winery in California (near Drytown in the Gold mine area). His wines are from Missouri and from California and some are mixed. He doesn't charge for tasting and seemed happy to let us have samples of everything we wanted. His wines were very good -- I can't recall any that I didn't like -- but his Kona Port was excellent. He also had a sparkling white wine that was good on it's own but was even better if you added apricot nectar to it -- like a Mimosa. His Sangiovese was also very good. He sells other wines as well and had a good selection.

The guy is very laid back and seems pleased to have folks visit and learn about his wine and the winery. It is on the national historic register and he has quite an operation. He has several motel units... very plush but inexpensive. He also has a canoe outfitting business on the river. We ordered a couple wood-fired pizzas and had a light lunch.

There was another excursion that took part of the group to do some shopping at Yankee Peddler and other shops. It didn't seem like much was purchased -- we didn't need what they had for sale. 

We all went out for supper on Wednesday night and had plans to play miniature golf but the evening got away from us and miniature golf will have to wait for another time. We did rock out...literally...to some oldies music at the restaurant while we were waiting for our table. It was quite a scene and Elvis and Roy Orbison were big hits. We tried to watch the Perseid meteor shower but the moon was too bright and then it got cloudy. We were too tired anyway.

Since we didn't mess the place up very much, moving out was fairly easy and we all said our goodbyes and were on the road by 10 AM on Thursday. Seems like a good time was had by all.