William, we are coming

William has spring break. Time to drive to Nashville. Well, packing never takes us that long so we decided we could go to Friday night dinner with our CR friends as we quite often do. Choice place to eat this night was HOBNOB.  We were quite impressed. It was very nice and our food was super. We surely need to go again (but reservations will be needed). I had rockfish and it was so much better then the one I had at the posh Jefferson for our anniversary. I should have sent it back but I could not believe that a Jefferson cook could mess up a dish like that. I wanted to try it again and decided that I really like rockfish.

Saturday March 9

Alarm clock rang early. On the road at 6:30 am. Frost and snow on the trees around Charlottesville.

Fog on the mountain. Luckily on a Saturday the traffic is light.

As usual we had our breakfast (senior coffee) break and lunch break. It got warmer and the sun even decided to shine. That was so nice.

Later ... more fog on the mountain.

The last hour of drive was in a  horrible downpour. Sometimes James could only go walking speed and we turned the flashers on. But ... we arrived safely. Helen came to see us for a while and all was good.

Looking out of the back door: we had three rivers after that downpour. The creek had a white water feature. Can't really appreciate that in the photo.

Sunday

James and I went to St Mark Episcopal Church close to the townhouse. They know us there and it was a good service.

At noon we arrived at Helen's. She had invited us to lunch. First we had to admire her little free library. She and William have so much fun with that. The library has mostly children' books. When we arrived a man was just donating some adult books of which Helen had to sort out one of them (!). 

Later we went to Lowes and Home Depot for some important errands. We felt we had been successful. On the way home we stopped at Kroger because Helen asked whether she could come for dinner and suggested tomato pie. 

No problem.

We all decided that it was the best tomato pie I had ever made. Yeah!

Monday

Ben brought William to us just before 9 am. Ah, nothing like a wonderful hug from a grandchild!

We did all sorts of things and in the late afternoon we decided that we really needed to have at least just a little bit of exercise. The sun was shining (finally) and the sky was blue. We went to check the mailbox (which is never supposed to have anything in it) and went to the little pond to see how high the water was. The walk felt good.

The boys (William and James) went to do some food shopping and later Papa had put a pizza into the oven. We had no room for dessert after that but William likes to stay up a little later when there is no school the next day so we had strawberries and cream later. Looks like William enjoyed it.

Tuesday

James and I had made an appointment (with Hal) for 10 am in Paducah KY a long time ago. We had to get up early and left before 8 am. William was very cooperative. After the 2 hour drive he sat in the lobby with the secretary for 1-plus hour.

After our appointment we went to Grace Church. John wanted to meet us there. John and I communicate a lot about Chrismons. He is the one who makes them all every year for this church and he uses my patterns. Several weeks ago I made the "mistake" to ask him whether he knew somebody who could do something about the "family bench" in the Memorial Garden. After my father had died in 2003 and his ashes were interred there a bench was placed in honor of James' and my fathers. It is made from teak wood but over the years it had become very ugly. Every time I visited I spoke to the church custodian and tried to find out what we could do about it. Well, mentioning this to John he wanted to take care of it. 

Thank you, John, for putting so much work into this. He transported it somewhere so it could dry out, cleaned it, sanded it, stained it, sealed it, oh yes I think some mending/screwing was done too. He had put it into the parish hall today for us to see. He also had tried to clean and polish the old sign but it was beyond that and had arranged for a new one. Now he plans to get new chains so the bench can be secured back in its place in the Memorial Garden. Thank you, thank you!

While we were talking, William walked the labyrinth which the custodian had painted on the church carpet. I think it is a super idea!

We had to hurry and were a little late because we had arranged to meet friends at Kirchhoff's for lunch. Barb happened to have her granddaughter Kenna with her so William happened not to be the only child. Nancy had heard that we were in town and gave me a surprise phone call. So she joined us too. It was very nice and we chatted like a firestorm. Eventually the children were bored and it was time to say good-bye.

We wanted to show William the flood wall. After all he likes to do city planning on Minecraft. It was a bit chilly but he was impressed with the wheels of this locomotive. 

The flood wall gates were all closed (except one). A friend had emailed the following to me:

Flood gates are still in place. William will be interested in that engineering feat. The flood gates are actually panels slipped together. A big crane assists. At 50 ft, the river would be on Broadway. The latest I know the water is 52.8 ft.

If you can, look at the dam as you cross the bridge, all the gates are open. WPSD had a feature last might showing people pulling onto the overview to watch the water, it is a rare happening. I'm  not sure what exit you take to get there, it is not far from I-24.

(We saw the open gates on the dam when we drove home. Impressive)

A gate at the convention center was open and we could peek over the sandbags to see a bit of the river. Not enough for William though to be of interest and it was cold.

Time to head back to Nashville. Thanks heaven for Kindles. 

We did stop half way though to stretch our legs, do what is necessary, get coffee for us and a Wendy's frosty for William. We had heard about a land slide which had closed one section of I-24 just before Nashville ... and we had seen it in the morning. We had also seen a long line at that exit so decided to take an earlier exit. Yeah for gadgets. We had made good decisions, avoided all bad traffic and were back in good time.