The Drive South

Okay, so I'm making it public that we will NEVER drive from Minnesota to Virginia again, got it? The last time I said that was about five years ago. I'm glad we made it that long, but hey, I'm now five years older and wiser and in a lot.more.pain from the long drive we just completed in our little Honda Civic. I still don't feel normal, but I did get a decent night's sleep last night and that's going to help.One of several cool bridges in Columbus, Indiana

Still, parts of the drive were lovely. We started off great at 5:25 a.m. on October 16, going south on I-94 and 90 through Wisconsin, around Chicago in the early afternoon, then further south to Indianapolis. We were excited, feeling good and making good time. We stayed at a (cheap) hotel just south of Indianapolis that night and in the morning drove just a little further to Columbus, Indiana. We had read in our AAA guide that Columbus was a town of 39k people that in the 1950s had decided they were going to have world-renowned architects design their buildings. A foundation was formed and now if you like modern architecture, Columbus is a place to see.

The library was designed by I.M. Pei (of the Louvre's triangle fame)We ended up pulling into the Columbus Visitor's Center just as the daily tour bus was pulling out. We made a rash decision to take it so they got us on the bus and we spent an hour seeing some of the highlights of the town. Like the church above and below, First Christian Church, designed by Eliel Saarinen. Eliel's son Eero, of that chair fame, designed another church in town. It was interesting to find this "gem" in the middle of Indiana.After Indiana we entered Kentucky, through Louisville and Lexington where we stopped very briefly at the Kentucky Horse Park just for Rose... But we had to keep moving on to our destination for the night, this great little college town just south of Lexington, Berea. I read about Berea in Midwest Living magazine a month ago so we decided that would be where we'd stop. It's considered the "Folk Arts and Crafts Capital of Kentucky". It's also home to this wonderful, wonderful little Berea College. No student pays tuition at Berea College; everyone there is on a 4-year full scholarship out of financial need. Here's what their website says about it: It is our mission to provide educational opportunity to students of great academic promise who have limited financial resources. In short, we think students are worth more than the tuition they can afford. Isn't that cool? They were also one of the first racially integrated schools, even before the Civil War (and if you're in Virginia, you better call that the "War of Northern Aggression--ain't no war civil".)

We did a little shopping in town, and stopped at the shop of Woodworker Warren May, who at this time has made over 15,000 mountain dulcimers and is the last of his kind. It was all George and I could do not to put one on the credit card!!! Especially after Mr. May sat down with George and taught him to play, unasked. We forbid ourselves to go back in the next day. Someday we'll mail order one, though, when we have the cash (really not much, only about $400). That night, Friday, we attended a Family Concert with David Holt and The Lightening Bolts, part of the Berea College Appalachian Center's annual Traditional Music Festival. The band was awesome but there were so many kids dancing and hollering you could hardly hear them. It was fun! David Holt is an amazing musician and storyteller, so we bought a couple CDs which we love. We also bought the band's banjo and guitar player, Laura Boosinger's, CD for kids "Sing It Yourself!" It is really enjoyable and I'd recommend it for anyone.To top all that off, Berea College has an Ecovillage which we walked through. It's like a townhouse development but with a few "extras" like solar panels, permaculture gardens, its own sewage treatment building, a community kitchen and a play area for the kids. We would've liked to have talked to some of the residents about what they're doing, but as it was Friday night they were all away from their homes it appeared. On Saturday we had a long day's drive to get to our final stop, George's parent's home in Gloucester, Virginia. We decided to resist attending the Traditional Music Festival's morning workshops. (Ooh, that was hard. I really wanted to learn Appalachian flat-foot clogging right there in the Appalachians! And Elijah and George really wanted to learn to play the washboard, bones and other mountain-style rhythm instruments with David Holt.) There was miles and miles to go, and first a stop in Salyersville, Kentucky to investigate just a bit the place where my great-great-Grandmother Drusilla Foster and her family had come from just after the Civil War. They are our only relatives that didn't come straight off the boat to Minnesota, and I've had a huge curiosity about this woman and her family. We spent a lot of time looking for gravestones in the many roadside cemeteries, and finally found the right one on the way out of town...

When I think of Kentucky, I'll always think of black barns, black fences, black hawks circling overhead, and chestnut brown horses in the pastures enclosed by those fences. Many barns had tobacco hanging to dry...And the mountains were blazing orange and red and yellow in contrast. I'm glad we made this drive, probably the last we'll do like it. I'm particularly happy to have had a taste of Kentucky and its people. America is a beautiful place!

More on Virginia tomorrow...(whether you care or not, it's good practice for me to get the trip logged out.)