People outside of Northern California don’t necessarily spend time learning about the 1849 California Gold Rush, but growing up in Sacramento, you can’t help but learn about it. Not surprisingly, people who live in this region of West Virginia you can’t help but absorb a lot of Civil War knowledge. Harper’s Ferry National Park is a gem of a park and so much more interesting than so many of the Civil War battlefields I’ve been to. And this was a continuous battleground over the course of the war.
The park is located on the Appalachian Trail and preserves the place where John Brown was tried and hung. As you walk around the old part of town you can see shops preserved as they might have been during the Civil War alongside a current day bookstore and places to find food or outdoor equipment.
You can also go on hikes or walks along the rivers. I hung out in the Coffee Mill while my friend Nyasha jogged and walked over bridges and along the river. The Coffee Mill was frustrating as so much of what was listed on the menu was unavailable.
We came across re-enactors in several places. I asked the three Confederate soldiers why motivated them to volunteer as living history docents. They are self-professed History nerds.
Parking is also a challenge. I grabbed one of the last spots along the street on Potomac Street. I downloaded the National Park Service parking app and paid via PayPal. After 10 a.m. you can probably expect to use the parking lot up the hill and take the shuttle to the main part of the historic village. I found it difficult to find a way to pay the day use fee. I finally waited in line at the entrance up the hill because I want our National Parks to be around for my grandchildren.
The entrance fee is just $10 per carload or $5 per person if you walk or bicycle into the Park. This is a real bargain at Harper’s Ferry.
One more of the few remaining states is “in the bag”. My friend Nyasha and I took a road trip from Alexandria, Virginia to the Harper’s Ferry region. We left on Friday afternoon. It is only a 1.5 hour drive with some traffic. After a quick stop at the Visitor’s Information Center, and then another quick stop to see the Appalachian Trail Headquarters before it closed, we headed toward the oldest town in West Virginia–Shepherdstown.
I freely admit that my travel choices are influenced by Netflix shows, especially 
This store at 
We browsed her cookbooks and are seriously exploring taking the chocolate malt cake in the near future. Meanwhile I crumbled my remaining crack pie in my oatmeal this morning and it was very, very good.
I was looking for some hidden gems in Boston so I checked out the website 
People rarely put a city’s central library on a list of must sees. The New York Public Library reading room is an obvious exception, and the Library of Congress is in a class by itself. So when my waitress at Cafe G at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum urged me to check out the 
If you find yourself in the South End of Boston and you want to mooch around a bead store or yarn shop you can satisfy both urges at 
I walked in and was offered a giant bone from the shop dog. Quickly someone asked if I minded dogs. Of course not. By the time I left there were three dogs between customers and the shop keepers. I love it.
There was a lot to look at and the shop offered a/c on a 90 degree day with 50% humidity. I love it.
We had a fun conversation with another Julie who stepped into the studio at the same time as me about the menacing green crabs–an invader from Europe who roots up the sea grass. Should we celebrate the intrinsic beauty of the green crabs even though they are destroying the ecosystem for lack of predators?
Thousands of people spend the day on the Capitol Mall on July 4th enjoying a concert and waiting for sunset for the fireworks to begin. I celebrated July 4 with my young children about 20 years ago–we ate hot dogs and watched the fireworks from the rooftop of the Department of Interior building.
This year I planned my vacation so I could be in Washington DC when my friend Nyasha from Auckland was going to be in Alexandria at the Virginia Theological Seminary. We enjoyed barbecue with Carole, Gary, Guy, Karly and Holly at Stephanie and Ron’s house on Capitol Hill. Then we walked to the Library of Congress steps to watch the fireworks. It was a very traditional Independence Day celebration except the fireworks were beyond amazing.
I am quickly closing in on my goal of visiting all 50 states. I actually was already quite close when I received my National Geographic mini atlas in the mail. I began marking all of the places I’d been and states I’ve visited and realized that I only have a handful left.
Once you are an adult you must meet a higher standards. Our group debated what this meant. We determined that it “counted” if you left the airport or train station and either did a bit of shopping or eat a meal. The next weekend the group of first time travelers intrepidly took a ferry to Scotland, then a train to Glasgow and did some shopping and ate a meal. Good on them!
This posed a problem. If you go on Trip Advisor and ask what there is to do in New Hampshire it comes up with lots of mountains to climb or ski. It was only after we got the recommendation from a NH native to check out Portsmouth that we could do a more refined search and get some ideas. We left Boston at 11:00 a.m. and needed to stop at The Container Store, and then we hit a lot of traffic. We didn’t get to Portsmouth until after 1:00 p.m. I was feeling peckish and yet we wanted to save room for dinner.
The first time I visited the 
2. Paint at least one wall “zappy blue”. The last paint color that inspired me was Jefferson’s choice of robin’s egg blue in Monticello. This is even more exciting. Gardner created the recipe and sent it to Italy to be mixed. I wonder if my local Sherwin Williams can recreate this.
americanjulie.com 