Debbie & Clay's Road Trips with Bob: October 2018

Monday, October 29, 2018

East Coast Inland Passage Cruise on American Cruise Lines' Independence

We'll be off again by week's end. I posted a map of this trip from ACL's website previously. I noticed that both the online itinerary and map are different from what they mailed us. So here is the latest information scanned in and pasted below. Of course, we know what we actually experience could be different yet. That's OK, we're going where they're going.

Wednesday, October 24, 2018

A Happy 70th Birthday

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Clay had a good day for his actual 70th, yesterday. Of course, as usual, we've been celebrating it for at least a month now. But today was the day. He got calls from his siblings, from an aunt and a b-day card with a check from his mother-in-law. For dinner, he'd chosen to go to Angus Barn. It is a local institution and very popular. It is a big meal though and a big expense and inconvenient to get to being out by the airport, so we only go about once a decade. That said there had been some changes though much remained the same. The biggest change we noticed was the Wild Turkey Lounge has moved upstairs and been enlarged. That was good for us as viewing the menus online, we'd decided that on a Tuesday night we'd take our chances there without a reservation. We realized that the difference between the 2 menus after 5:30pm was that the lounge would not include a salad and that was fine. What we didn't know is that the cheese, cracker and relish dish the restaurant includes up front at the table was also included at the lounge by way of a self-serve buffet. Bonus. The biggest change Clay noticed is that his much anticipated beef ribs had changed. He knew they served 5 last time we went and now it was 4 but what he didn't know until they were served was the cut had changed. You can ask him about rib meat cuts and he'll give you his treatise. Suffice to say he's had his last beef ribs at Angus Barn. Too bad. Lastly, we've always picked up a chocolate chess pie at the gift shop on our way out. The price has increase dramatically to $18 since our last visit. That is still close to the price for 2 servings for a whole pie, but not the great deal it used to be. Still a good dinner. They still have a barrel of red apples to pick one from on your way out.

In other disappointing news, you may have noticed the January temps arrived overnight this week. Clay has finally found a chink in the armor of his Kia Niro PHEV. It seems that the battery capacity or charge time is seriously reduced by the cold temperatures. Not surprising, but he is pretty stressed right now. Thank God we already put in the Level 2 charger for his birthday!

Sunday, October 21, 2018

Leaving Richmond

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Here is today's itinerary while I have free time. I may come back later and flesh this out. Hopefully Clay will add his photos.

We were up early again. Today because I woke up hollering with a nightmare at 5:30am. Breakfast didn't start until 7am. It was good but a bit different today. We both made waffles.

8:45am checkout and load bus
9am bus departs for Valentine Museum to pick up local guide
9:30am bus tour of Richmond, Hollywood Cemetery, Main St. Station and railroad triple cross
11:30am return to Valentine Museum to drop off local guide and return to Staples Mill Rd. area for lunch (we dropped at both McDonalds and Wendys from 11:45am to 12:45pm)
1pm Arrive Amtrak Station at Staples Mill Road
1:34pm board Amtrak #79 for return trip
5:30pm or so disembark train in Cary

We're home safe and tired! So, some updates and variations to the scheduled itinerary. First, the big bus we'd be on for 2 days did not appear. A small bus showed up! Not enough room for us all + our luggage. We left the luggage at the motel and it rejoined us later at the train station. It worked out but caused some stress. We had not packed to have our luggage left behind and handled. Next we completely dropped Hollywood Cemetery from the tour without explanation or comment. We didn't really see the Main St. Station though we drove past it. We walked a bit along the canal from last night to check out the railroad triple cross and the flood wall as well as the sculpture of the Box that a slave had himself shipped out of Richmond. We'd seen all that from the canal cruise yesterday and it was a closer look. Today we also learned that the ground level train tracks of the triple cross have not been used since some time in the 1950s! Technically, it seems like that makes it a double cross to me...

We had normal seats today on the Amtrak Carolinian and enjoyed the ride back. What a difference! We had about 14 inches of leg room each today vs. the 10.5 inches that we shared with the passenger facing us on the ride to Richmond. Also, it helped that today's train was on time!

It was a jam packed trip but we enjoyed it. We still enjoyed the old NCTM trips when they used vintage cars instead of just traveling in Amtrak coach. Oh well.

Saturday, October 20, 2018

Richmond

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Clay woke me at triple nickels this morning. I had to try to figure out what the hell he was talking about since I asked him to wake me at 6:30am. After I asked, he told me it was 5:55am. He was so pleased with himself I just shut up and rolled with it. Better an early start than a late one.

The Comfort Suites room is huge. There is a living room entrance with a coffee/microwave/fridge area across from a big single sink bathroom. It has a shower over tub. Through a door is a large bedroom with 2 double beds, a chest of drawers, a bedside table, TV, desk and chair and 2 lamps. There is a window over a parking lot. It includes a complete complimentary breakfast buffet. No complaints whatsoever except for it being 15 miles north of Richmond with nothing in walking distance.

Here is today's proposed itinerary as I have time now and later I may be exhausted.

6 to 8:15am breakfast
8:30am bus departs for VA State Capitol and Capitol Square
9am arrive
10:45am City Hall Observation deck for views
11:30am bus departs for American Civil War Museum
noon Box lunch from Garnett's at picnic area of National Park Service
12:45pm divide into 2 groups at ACWM for guided tour of museum and NPS visitor center of Historic Tredegar
2:30pm bus to VA Museum of History & Culture and VA Museum of Fine Arts. They are in the same block and we are free to visit either or both untill 5pm. The art museum we are told has the largest Faberge collection outside Russia.
5pm bus to Riverfront Historic Canal Cruise
5:30pm cruise
7pm Explore Shockhoe Slip area and dinner on our own
9pm bus back to Comfort Suites in Glen Allen

Sounds like a full day! I'll post this and come back and edit it if needed. As before I'll hope Clay will attach photo slideshows.

I'm back after 9pm. I have some updates. We were expected at the VA State Capitol and had a private guided tour. It was fabulous. VA has a new underground visitors center to enter the Capitol and NC should take a lesson! Even more impressive was that Vice-President Mike Pence was visiting Richmond today campaigning and even though all the streets around the Capitol had barricades and police and Secret Service, the folks at the Capitol had let them know we were expected and on the 2nd pass when we pulled up and asked a police man, he told us where to go and they'd lower the barricade to admit us and they did!

City Hall Observation Deck was closed today. There were 2 cranes working at the top of the building so we don't know it was closed for work or because of Pence and the attendant security. In any event,, we wound up instead at the Richmond Railroad Museum instead. They had opened early today expecting a scheduled group who did not arrive and were happy to welcome us instead. They gave us guided tours again here!

We also were honored by a special treatment at the VA Museum of History where we got guided highlights tours and a special presentation. They took some special NC related artifacts out of the vault to share with us only. They had a George Washington journal/diary that they opened to his entry about visiting NC. It was a special touch.

We had a so-so dinner at Sine Irish Pub. It was a convenient walk from the bus drop/pickup.

The rest of the day went as scheduled except that we ended at loading the bus back to the motel at 8:30pm for 9pm arrival back. It was a long day.

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Friday, October 19, 2018

To Richmond, VA

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It is late and has been a long day so we'll see how far I get with this. We aren't off to a great start.

The NC Transportation Museum's tour began in Salisbury early on Amtrak train #80 the Carolinian and picked up again in Greensboro and picked up 2 hosts and 5 guests finally in Cary. We boarded in Cary. We met Dr. Kevin Cherry again (we first met him this spring on the Old Albemarle boat tour). We were greeted and remembered. We were given name tags and a Norfolk Southern string pack. The string pack was a good bag! It contained Richmond maps and brochures, sun screen, lip balm, hand sanitizer, mouth wash, toothpaste w/ a travel toothbrush, a collapsible water bottle, Advil, Orbit gum and a pocket pack of tissues! The train eventually arrived a full hour late and everything all day was moved back or shortened.

So, 10:45am board the train. We find we've been assigned seats in a little booth formation at the front of the car with exactly 10.5 inches between the edge of one seat to the facing seat. We were assigned forward facing seats but we couldn't sit there! All the overhead storage was taken so we had to use under our seats which left no room for our feet. I had my legs between the legs of the man across from me and Clay was sitting sideways with his legs in the aisle. The 4 people across the aisle I am not sure ever got sitting all 4 in their space. Clay and I went back to the cafe car 2 cars back and rode sitting in there for all but about an hour of the 4 or so hour ride.

First stop about 4:15pm after 3pm arrival in Richmond was Maymount. It sounded interesting. But we were supposed to meet one of the tour hosts who had a snack buffet set up for us in the park and it took us about a half hour to find him! Some walked the park and some rode the bus. In the end, we never caught side of anything worth seeing. If we'd had a map to start we might have stayed off at the first stop and walked to the picnic area, but we didn't get one until we found our way to the visitor center and then our time was nearly up. Oh well. In hindsight, they probably should have just skipped this and gone straight to the motel. But that raises another downside. We are in a very nice Comfort Suites. The problem is that it is 15 miles outside Richmond across the street from a nearly shut down shopping center! So far we've been a 30 minute bus ride from anything.

We got checked in at 5:30pm. We got back on the bus at 6:15pm for a ride to Carytown to be dropped off for dinner on our own. We got turned loose at 6:40pm and met back at the same corner at 9pm to return to the motel.

We had dinner at Weezie's Kitchen. This is not the menu they were serving! I had chicken fingers and got too much food. The real problem happened when I bit the first one which I picked up and it didn't feel that hot, but when I bit it, it steamed a big blister on my lower lip. Clay got Philly cheese steak sandwich that he said had a bell pepper taste. We walked to Kilwin's for dessert. Clay had a cone and I had a marshmallow. We still had an hour to kill. So we walked. The original plan had us here from 6 to 9pm. The stores mostly closed at 7pm so my the time we arrived most of the stores were closed. You can only eat so much. The find of the day was our last stop at Narwhals Rolled Ice Cream. It was not only fascinating but delicious! They freeze cream on a frozen drum to order. We had a Reese's Peanut Butter cup version to share because we were already stuffed. This was the highlight and surprise of our day. Two thumbs up!

We are up and out for the whole day tomorrow with rain forecast. We had an early morning so I'll close now and hope Clay will agree to add a photo slide show link later. I think most of his photos are of food as we didn't see much today. He has a great video though at Narwhals. We'll see. Check back.

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Tuesday, October 9, 2018

Chihuly at Night at Biltmore

1. Sole d'Oro 2017 in front of Biltmore House

1. Sole d'Oro 2017

We attended Chihuly at Night at Biltmore in Asheville, NC on the final night of the show. So, anything I have to report here now is of little use to anyone reading! I'll still go ahead and urge a visit to Biltmore or Asheville if convenient as they're amazing and beautiful. I'd suggest seeing Chihuly glass works anywhere you have the chance as it is stunning. We almost didn't go because one it ran all summer and it is too hot! It was still summer heat on October 7! The other reason was it was summer and the sun set so late. We were able to get a 7:45pm entry for the final week or so of the show. It was worth it even though our tickets were just over $80pp. That did include daytime entry to Biltmore Estate as well. If we had planned better for example, we could have returned on October 8 and done something else like the segway tours of the park. So not getting full value from our tickets was on us.

2. Sky Blue and Cobalt Fiori 2017

So it is about a 4 hour drive each way between here and there. We drove for about an hour in Asheville. That was 9 hours of driving on a single tank of gas! Clay continues to love the Kia Niro PHEV. We recently had a level 2 charger installed and that has made charging much more convenient. Other than the 4 gallons of gas Clay replaced from the trip down to Grifton this was the first tank of gas he'd burned since purchasing the car in May.

3. Laguna Torcello II 2018

There was a surprising amount of traffic everywhere we were the entire time. We had forgotten about Columbus Day on the 8th and wonder if that was a factor. Clay believes it is just that NC has become too populous! Biltmore on our arrival on the 7th after 4:30pm was like the State Fair or something. It was crazy crowded.

We stayed at Comfort Inn Biltmore West for the reason only that we redeemed a free night there with half our available loyalty points. It was a bit out of the way but free and a clean, quiet, large room off the freeway with a complimentary breakfast buffet. It was a great value.

4. Float Boat 2017

We had an early dinner/late brunch at White Labs. We didn't love it. We shared a pizza and a dessert. Clay had a beer. We probably could have just eaten at the Stables area of Biltmore instead.

It took us less time than forecast to drive there and park and walk to the house and exchange our tickets for wristbands. It was so hot we minimized activity and sat in the Stables area and had a root beer, a big bottle of water and a brownie hot fudge sundae! Then we moved to the terrace side of the house for sunset. It wasn't a great sunset.

5. Niijima Floats 2018

After sunset we started the Chihuly garden portion touring, at 7:45pm we did the first floor of the house portion of the tour for 2 Chihuly installations before returning to finish with the walled garden portion. After that we returned to the car and drove to Antler Hill Village in the park to see the last 2 Chihuly pieces installed there. There were 16 separate installions to visit and the oldest was from 1996, 2 from 2014 and 1 from 2015 and the rest were 2017-2018.

6. Palazzo Ducale Tower 1996

We enjoyed it! We almost didn't go because the TV ads looked too much to me like Chihuly Garden and Glass which we had visited in Seattle. But these were mostly new works made for this temporary installation. I would highly recommend Chihuly Garden and Glass if you're ever in Seattle.