The "Yard Sales of Virginia" Tour

Saturday, September 7th.
Exterior.
Another KOA Campsite. This time outside Washinton D. C. The atmosphere in the Club Wagon is marked by nervousness. The anti-theft alarm system in the van has been acting up, causing the horn to honk furiously and the lights to flash. And almost costing Dan and Jens their shelter for the night.

After a good night's sleep in the van we spent the morning updating the webpage, showering, and fixing a gourmet breakfast of the bread and cheddar chease left over from our dinner feast the night before. Finished off breakfast with a delicious piece of apple cake that Bruce, a good friend of Carol & Brent, had baked for us.

Checked out right at 12 o'clock and headed towards Monticello. On the way there we happened upon the visitor center by accident, and like everyone else, it seemed, we dutifully stopped and went in there. But unlike everyone else we left pretty quickly... :)

We made our way back up the winding road to Monticello, only to find the parking lot completely crowded with cars. Slightly turned off by the $11 entrance fee we decided to leave it to everyone else to continually beat and litter the path to Thomas Jefferson's house.

Instead we continued on the scenic SR20 which made its winding way up and down the rolling Virginia hills and past open fields and grazing horses. And since we had decided to head towards Washinton DC at a leisurely pace, we took our time to stop at every single yard sale along the way! :)

Just a few miles down the road from the campground we stopped at the first yard sale and picked up a pocket state- and city map atlas and a Jackson 5 cd. Then we went to a couple that yielded no crop, one of which was held by a really nice older man and his wife. Jens felt really bad not buying anything there, but unfortunately all the golf clubs he had were right-handed, and Jens hits left-handed. And the otherwise rather funky Brunswick bowling ball he had for sale had holes that were too small for Jens' fingers.

Just outside Barboulsville we turned off the highway to follow signs for another yard sale. This took us several miles down an eventually dead-end road where we found an older almost toothless fellow in a John Deere cap who spoke a language we didn't understand much of. He wasn't selling much of anything that interested us, but we appreciated the great view he had from his backyard, and bought a baseball from him.

On our way back to the main road we passed the greatest little church and couldn't pass up the photo opportunity. The "Church of the Brethren" was a tiny one-story building with about 12 gravestones in the front yard and a port-a-jon in the back! We loved it.

From there we made our way towards Fredericksburg along a beautiful route apparently designated as the "Constitution Trail" by some state authority, judging by the signs along the way. Whatever they meant by that. We stopped at a great old run-down barn and goofed around taking pictures in front of it. We caused no harm to anything, and figured that no one would arrest two guys and a green couch for trespassing. Our last money spent in Virgina bought us a 1940's baseball mitt and 28 gallons of gas. After an unintentional detour that took us by a few beach communities on the Potomac River we crossed the river and entered Maryland.

We'd decided to play it safe for our first night in the D.C. area, so we pushed on into the early evening to make it to the KOA campground between Washington and Baltimore. After taking a wrong turn exiting the interstate we packed in another detour until we finally got there. We coughed up $30 for a little piece of flat dirt and access to bathroom facilities and headed down the road to find some supper. The local Subway restaurant got the honor of providing us with a less-than-exciting but quite filling dinner. And free refills on root beer are never to be snuffed at :)

We returned to the camp site hoping to quietly settle in for the night. But our trusty van wouldn't have it so. For apparently no reason it starting honking its alarm system even though the doors were unlocked, finally prompting the Camp Guy® to warn us that we'd either have to sleep with the door open or he would have to ask us to leave. We've now snuck inside the van and quietly closed the doors and will leave the problem-solving for tomorrow morning...