Week 8 - Last week of the trip

Winchester Virginia

    We drove from Morganton to Winchester, Virginia, not a long day.  The weather is still summery, so we have not given up the shorts yet!  We have stayed outside Winchester before, but have never ventured into town, but this time we did and found it to be a beautiful little Shenandoah town. The downtown is pedestrianized and very pretty.  The town changed hands in the Civil War - over 70 TIMES, which is remarkable.  We ate at a little Sushi restaurant and then strolled.  (We also did a load of laundry.)

Mom and Bob

   After Winchester, we drove to see my mother in Binghamton, NY and stayed with my best friend from high school, Kathy and her husband, for two nights.  We had a nice visit, although, have reluctantly had to give up wearing shorts.  Sigh.  There was actually a little bit of snow in the air the first night we were there.
   Then, we drove from Binghamton to Concord, Massachusetts for 3 nights with our daughter Jecca and her family.  On the first full day there, Mark and I drove into Boston to see if we could find English newspapers for the play Mark will be directing soon, Noises Off!  No luck, but, amazingly, we ran into two Nantucket graduates - Connie McDonough-Thayer and Gillian Paige.  We were only in Harvard Square for 45 minutes, yet managed to run into two people we know!   We made speidis from Binghamton for dinner.

Sturbridge Village

Saw Mill: Otis, Henry, Mark

Henry and Otis dipping candles

Henry and Otis being silly

Henry on play ox

Carding Mill

    But, the best day at Concord was our day with Otis and Henry in Sturbridge Village, a place we have never visited, but Jec and Willy are members.  We had a lovely sunny day and we had the place almost to ourselves as the schools are still in session. (But Concord had a teacher-parent conference day.)  We spent hours there strolling, watching the saw mill and carding mill; the kids hand-dipped candles etc.  We all felt that we learned a great deal about the every-day life on a farm in New England.  We lunched at Friendly's.  A good time was had by all.