Judy P's Tickle Trunk

Classic Williamsburg. Looked all but ready for snow.

The next leg of our trip was from Falls Church to Williamsburg, Virginia. Driving south, the proportion of leaves still on the trees increased as it had been doing since we left home. The leaves that were there were in a state of decline however, and their fall colours a lot less brilliant. Mostly tired browns and yellows now. By the time we reached Williamsburg most of the trees were bare. 2014 will be remembered by me as the year of perpetual autumn.

All bound for Jamestown.

As we drove along I saw the road-sign for Richmond and the snippet of song popped into my head “In the winter of ’65, We were hungry, Just barely alive, By May the 10, Richmond had fell, It’s a time, I remember oh so well” and for the next hour or so, what words I could recall of The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down rattled around in my brain as I knit sock monkeys and marvelled at the busy-ness of these highways. Not much like the mud of the civil war roads now, but all pavement and concrete. So much concrete. I felt like Judy Jetson in Orbit City (I loved the episode of the Jetsons in which June learned to drive). All in all, after so many bridges and merges and Interstate highways my perception was skewed such that when coming off an interchange I mistook a parking lot for a highway (thank heavens it was Lance who was driving) and a little later I mistook a highway for a parking lot (fender bender stand-still).

We passed a building site the scale of which I haven’t seen since I toured the Churchill Falls dam. There were posts and blocks the enormity of which I hadn’t known existed; like a giant mechano set and the tinker toys of Athos.  Everything is bigger here. An enormous truck passes us wearing a warning sign on its back end: OVERSIZE LOAD and I try, after a week of chocolate torte, bacon jam and pumpkin rolls, not to take it personally.

Anvil Campground. This little camper made ours look gigantic by comparison.

On arrival  at our new temporary home,  Anvil Campground, we found our first glitch. It was a hitch glitch. A little metal nub had rusted away allowing a sway bar to drop. So that was the loud pop I heard a while back. Thankfully an RV dealer was able to accommodate us but not without the dreaded words “we have to order in the part.” That left lots of room for fretting. I was also fretting because it was cold and there was much settling in to do. We didn’t hook up the water and were glad of it when our neighbour told us the next morning that his water lines had frozen overnight. The sewage hose didn’t reach the drain-pipe and my blood sugars were making me irritable. (Irritable is such a mild word really. More like contrary I was really.)

It was cold and I was glad for my Rosies coveralls. I wield an iron pipe but was so cranky I could have wielded the anvil for which the campground was named.

Our campsite, was within spitting distance from Williamsburg and just a little further on was Jamestown, which we planned to visit. We were also within spitting distance of the railway tracks. I enjoyed the sound of the trains as they rumbled through with an occasional mournful blast of their whistles, shaking the camper as they went by. The Hogwarts express? They ran day and night but oddly didn’t interfere with my sleep. Indeed, I found them kind of comforting.

Taken from our campsite. If you look closely you can see the train going by.

Question of the day: If we keep going south will we reach a point where the leaves don’t fall off the trees?

Travel Tip: When you hear a pop or clunk, don’t just wonder about it but get off your duff and investigate. It might be something important.

© Judy Parsons 2014