We had a marvelous morning. We visited the Frontier Culture Center, just outside Staunton. The Virginia Board of Education contributed a ton of money. They got a first class facility. For example, they disassembled historic houses in Europe and meticulously put them back together so we can see exactly how certain people lived. I knew that the Irish burned peat. They didn’t have wood, and peat was plentiful. I didn’t know the disadvantage is that it peat makes a lot of very disagreeable smoke. Below is a picture of a early settler’s house with a push-away chimney. It’s push-away because if when it catches on fire, they could push it away and save the house. It only takes a day to build a new push-away. If you decide to go, you should call first. The board of education is going to get their money’s worth. They have students from around the state visit. Sometimes they have 600 kids running around. We were lucky. There were only a few visitors. We had a blast, including a picnic lunch in perfect weather.

We had such a good time at the culture museum that we didn’t have time to play mini-golf. Don’t worry, we didn’t totally lose our priorities. We still had time to get some Hershey’s ice cream at the Pink Cadillac diner.

After that the day kind of fell apart. Our next stop was Blacksburg. There was an accident on I-81. One of the two lanes was closed. Traffic was extremely slow. After we got past the accident, traffic was still heavy and slow. Our plan was to eat at a downtown restaurant followed by the movie Oppenheimer. When we got here, downtown was closed off for an annual fair. There were heavy crowds and more very slow traffic. After we got out of the downtown area, we found a deli for dinner and went to CVS for candy bars. We went back to our hotel watched “Ticket to Paradise”. Today we will (eventually) make it to see the Reeds.