September 26 - “Walking to Maryland”

We left the hotel around 8:30 for the next leg of the journey - somewhere north. First stop was somewhere on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Well, not stop, exactly. Other than the visitor centers and a picnic table for lunch. This morning’s activity was more limited to driving and admiring some of God’s mountainous, treeful, creative activity. 

And the driving continued when we skipped an exit or two and hopped up into Shenandoah National Park. Same kind of thing as the Parkway. Beauty and apparently the occasional beast, although we never saw any other than the occasional hawk. We did experience some excitement up there, though. Just as we began our descent, a severe thunderstorm dropped open around us. Even had some hail. Fortunately, we were headed in opposite directions, so the storm didn’t affect us long. We were glad to get out of that one, for sure. 

After our morning of no particular mental strenuosity (like that word? Spell check sure didn’t), we next typed into our Siri: “Harper’s Ferry.”  Yep. That one wasn’t on our itinerary at all, but we saw it on the map just a few miles away, and we remembered it had some pretty big deal significance to the Civil War, so here we go. It was pretty interesting, too. They have reconstructed the actual firehouse that John Brown holed up in until he was finally soundly defeated by federal troops led by a certain up and coming officer named Robert E. Lee. Fully half of the little town has been repurposed into museums and exhibits relating to the times and events surrounding the Civil War and before. We even walked across a railroad bridge over the Potomac River into Maryland. The civilian part of town provided food and “entertainment “ (read here: bars).  We ate in the town. I had a very well-done (read here … dry - oh, so dry) cheeseburger. Sad, too, because the meat was really thick. Could have been really juicy. It wasn’t. Chris had a tuna salad sandwich. No complaints from her. 

‭‭1 John‬ ‭2:6 says, “Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did.”

Father, thank you for the chance to take advantage of serendipitous map discoveries. Amen.