Lexington Park, MD to Lexington, VA. Today was a beautiful back-road jaunt through the middle of Virginia. Made a stop in Richmond to visit a cousin of Donna’s. We had a couple of hours to kill before we could get together so we visited the Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens. Nice place to visit and it was in very good shape considering the drought that central Virginia is in the middle of. After lunch with cousin Suzy & her daughter we finished the day’s journey by heading west on US 60, a very straight road with lots of ups and downs until you hit the Blue Ridge Mountains. Then it winds it way to the top where it crosses the Blue Ridge Parkway and then winds itself right back down into the Lexington area. The Taurus didn’t do to bad on the twisty roads, a set of higher performance tires and I’m sure we could have given some of today’s “sports” cars a good run.
That night I went to my second high school football game ever. The last one was almost 29 years ago while in my senior year of New Britain High School. Some friends and I snuck into the Thanksgiving Day game with our big cross-town rivals, Pulaski High. Tonight I “snuck” into the game between cross-county rivals, Rockbridge County High School and Parry McCluer High School. Stuart is the RCHS Marching Band Drum Major and tonight was his first football game in that capacity. Mom Sally is the president of the Band Booster Club, so she asked us to come along and help out. We followed the tractor pulling the trailer of band equipment down the road into the field to keep stuff from falling off. We just waved at the guy guarding the gate as we walked on by. Later that night I thanked Sally for helping fulfill a life-long dream of being able to get backstage somewhere by just saying, “I’m with the band.”