Our vacation from our vacation. We head to California tomorrow and the last two days have been filled with all the getting ready things that need to be done. Add to that, we are having Dot.Calm spruced up while we are away so Cliff had to move kayak and paddle board to make way for the cleaning crew. Whew!
AND, after all of the stories about flesh-eating bacteria, we decided better safe than sorry and headed to an Urgent Care facility to have a doctor take a look at Cliff’s wounds. With a prescription for a super anti-bacterial salve, we think we’ve taken all the steps necessary.
Better safe than sorry!
Busy. Busy.
No matter how busy, we take time for coffee on the upper deck every morning. Lovely! Electronic devices in hand (unfortunately?!), we check out the day’s headlines.
I am kind of sad that we won’t be here for the 4th of July celebration — not in DC!!! — but in Galesville. This is a very sweet, little town and I imagine that their Fourth of July Parade will be terrific. There are lots of flags, some waving and some constructed out of what looks like old barn wood.
The people who live in this house (about 5 houses away from Hartge Yacht Harbor) dress up their cement dog for every holiday.
See you on the 14th. And Happy Fourth of July to Everyone!
After yesterday’s adventure, we decided to stay on land today. Drove to Mount Vernon to tour George Washington’s home. Expected high temperature today was low 80s, compared to the high 90s we’ve had for last several days, another plus for us.
We saw Mount Vernon from the water last year when we cruised up the Potomac River to National Harbor. It was a speck of a building at that distance high on a bluff, looking like an impressively wide stone building with a red roof and two chimneys and a weather vane cupola.
The house is undergoing an exterior renovation which the guide says happens only every 50 years or so. I think his comment was meant to keep us all from feeling bad about seeing the place nearly shrouded in scaffolding.
Above are side-by-side photos of the exterior of the building. The one on the left shows the stripped surface; the one on the right shows the “original” surface. Washington was pretty clever. The house is built of yellow pine, but the wood was shaped to look like stone blocks. To complete the illusion, sand was thrown onto wet paint.
It is quite a nice tour. No photos are allowed in the house, but I can report that the attention to detail is extraordinary. The interiors were based on the year George Washington died, 1799, as a complete inventory of the house’s contents was made as part of settling his estate. The group that saved Mount Vernon as a national treasure, matched up the estate list with the detailed records George Washington kept of purchases throughout the years. Each room contains exactly what it did in 1799. The downstairs parlors (one for family and friends and one for receiving high ranking guests) are painted — one in a rich robin’s egg blue and the other in spring green. Those blues and greens were indications of a person’s wealth, as were the detailed wallpapers in the spacious upstairs bedrooms.
George Washington’s study was the most impressive room for me. In addition to a wall of glass-fronted bookcases, there was a “fanning chair” at the desk. Looking something like a rocking chair, the chair had pedals which attached to rod leading to a large blade shaped fan. The fan could be moved to and fro with George’s feet, leaving his hands free to keep the records of his five farms, distillery, grist mill and other enterprises.
The upper garden was very formal and used as an entertaining area for guests. “Everyone” visited — Madison, Monroe, Jefferson, LaFayette. But there is no record of Alexander Hamilton or John Adams visiting.The lower garden was the kitchen garden and it continues to grow a bountiful number of vegetables and herbs. In addition, fruit trees were trained as espaliered fences. The story goes that Martha took over this space after George’s attempt to grow grapes failed.
The view of the Potomac from the mansion’s porch is stunning. We learned that the area across the river is now a national park. At one point, a water treatment plant was in the works, but the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association (the keepers of the entire Mount Vernon complex) got word of it and one of the members purchased 400 acres smack dab in the middle of the site. Today the park is comprised of about 4000 acres and George Washington’s view has been saved. (Though his view was probably of farmland and not forest.)
With dreams of putt-putting off on our dinghy to sweet swimming locales, we purchased a ladder especially designed for inflatables at last February’s Miami Boat Show. And wisely (as it turns out) we decided to test it in a little cove near our mooring at Hartge’s. Here we are below, cheerily starting out on our journey to the testing grounds.
It turned into a comedy of errors. Make that ERRORS! First, Cliff read the printed instructions that came along with the “Rescue Ladder” apparatus. Seemed pretty straight forward. And the video we’d seen at the boat show made the process look pretty easy. Then we set out in the dinghy to test the contraption. (You see how I am leading you to understand the dilemma we faced.)
I slipped into the water and Cliff deployed the “Rescue Ladder.” I stepped onto the first rung and it immediately swung my foot under the dinghy. We tried a zillion adjustments to the ladder before Cliff hoisted me back into the dinghy. Inelegant is putting it politely. Indecent is probably accurate, as my bathing suit stretched downward on top and upward on the bottom — the physics of which I cannot understand. I was just grateful that he did not video my “landing.” I am sure it would have gone as viral as an eaglet hatching.
Despite my experience, Cliff decided to give it a go. Yikes. No better and I certainly could not hoist him back into the dinghy. We needed a new plan! I scurried (as much as you can in an 8-foot boat) to tie lines that might provide some leverage. Nothing worked.
Plan C or D or E…. Cliff instructed me to steer toward a far-off bank. (It seemed VERY far off to me.) Unfortunately, I hadn’t practiced steering with the electric engine and wasn’t very good at it….let’s make that I was horrible.* First, I sent the boat into a tight circle, then I accidently revved it up in reverse creating a wild bucking motion in the engine. Then a small fishing boat (that looked like it might have a real ladder) came by. I wanted to flag them down for help — but that was vetoed by you-know-who. Apparently, my frantic gestures to the boat was interpreted as a friendly wave so they just cruised past us.
Cliff decided that the best course of action was for him to pull the dinghy to shore. Apparently, he’d already gotten a couple of small slashes** from the propeller. He held this information back, so I was pretty sure the real reason was my total lack of piloting skills. That’s probably true.
We finally got to shallow water. The bottom was completely mucky. Cliff sunk to his knees with every step. But he could manage to hoist himself into the dinghy and shove off strongly enough to get us into deeper water.
“WARNING” indeed….this word, at the least, should have been printed in larger letters!DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT!UGH!
I am sure we will both have a lot of aches and pains tomorrow. But today was certainly a memorable half-birthday!
*In my defense, I will point out that steering a boat with a 240 lb. man hanging onto the side may account for some of my difficulty!
**The engine we have is a tiny electric one, so the propellers are plastic and the cuts on Cliff’s ankle and foot were minor. However, we’d just seen a story about flesh eating bacteria killing a woman who got a cut at a Florida beach. Neosporin to the rescue!
