An early morning in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Up through hills covered with trees awakening from a long winter. New leaves of every color of green and even some with a slight red tinge to the edges. Interspersed at irregular intervals are bright splashes of white and purple where the dogwoods and red buds are in full bloom. All of it wrapped in a silent shroud of fog until you finally break out on top to a world that is much brighter, even though the sky is still cloudy and threatening to rain.

    My propane alarm started going off again around 6:00 this morning, thereby confirming my original thought that my batteries are on their last legs. I'm not sure when they were originally installed. I can't believe they are original equipment as that would make them more than 9 years old, but I can believe 5-6 years old which to my way of thinking is still pretty good given the hundreds of charges and discharges they have gone through since I bought the trailer. So I'm not feeling too bad about it really, even though it is going to be a hefty charge to get both of them changed out. Will start looking for a couple of replacements tomorrow when I go into town.

   In the meantime; I took my time getting over to Fayetteville taking the back roads wherever I could. Down into the valleys and along the tree lined streams and rivers, then up and over the hills in one switch back after another. Actually kind of fun driving even in the truck pulling a trailer. Got into the RV site around 3:30 this afternoon only to find they were only excepting campers wanting to stay a week or longer. I guess the economy is such that they can't afford to have someone work every day for any less than that. So lucky for me I had planned on a week anyway and happened to get here right before everyone left for the day.

    So now I'm tucked into a nice little spot back amongst the trees, I'm the only one here at the moment and probably will be for some time. I think it is going to be a week to just relax and not do a whole lot. There are a few chores that need to be done around the trailer and the truck needs to be serviced again so it will be a good time to get some of that kind of stuff done. I may even get the train layout down and work on it a little bit.  Right now though I'm just going to finish this up, go do some dishes and then read some of my book. Below are the final photo's from my visit to Henricus a couple of weeks ago. The rest of the photo's were posted a few days ago so you may need to go back and take a look at them first if you haven't seen any of them before. Either way... enjoy!

Henricus Historical Park - Part II  -  April 2013




 

This is Rock Hall, a recreation of the church parsonage. It would of been the home of the Rev. Alexander Whitaker the pastor of Henricus. It was here that Pocahontas came to live and be instructed in Christianity.

No glass for windows way back when, just wooden shutters to close during bad weather and against attack. The bars were there to keep animals and people out when the shutters were open.

The main room in the parsonage where important people would of gathered.

Another large fireplace. This one shows a nice close view of the metal 'crane' to hold pots over the fire. On the right side is a small 'oven' where a few coals could be laid down to heat that smaller space.

The top of the roof over the stairway. On the left hand side is a let-in, lapped, dovetail joint joining the rafter tie to the main roof beams. On the right hand side is the same joint, but it is a mirror image so that it locks the tie in even better. Pretty cool joinery considering it is all done by hand.

A couple of braces for a roof purlin. The 'bumps' are the ends of wooden pegs that are driven through holes in the purlin and into the braces interior tenon, joining both tightly together.

What would of been a common style of bed for the well to do. Note the rope mattress supports showing along the middle part of the exterior support rails. A common method of supporting hay filled mattresses or 'ticks', they gave rise to the saying; Sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite'.

A closer view of some of the wooden beams, rafters and purlins and the joints connecting them all together. I also liked the 'felted' hat on the table.

A reproduction of Mont Malado or Mt Malady, the first hospital in the new world. It would of been large enough to house 80 colonists at any one time.

Another view of Mt Malady. Doncha just love that name?

Looking at the roof framing on the inside of the hospital. Sorry for all the pictures of wood thingy's and joints and stuff. I just happen to like looking at them all and trying to figure out what they were thinking about while building them.

Ten different joints at least, all within 24" of the main support post. Now this is a neat bit of work and must of been quite the jigsaw puzzle to get it all tied together and set up correctly.

For all my contra dancing friends; I figure there's room for the band and caller and at least two good lines of dancers with space left over for sitting and socialising. Needs a good sweeping though.

Just the cutest little hand made cart. They were hauling wood in it the day I was there.

You can't talk about 1st and 2nd settlements in the new world with out understanding that there was a functioning society already here. There was a section on the fort grounds set apart to showcase some of these people. In this case it is the Powhatan Indians that lived in this area. Their actual town, Arrohateck, was actually another 4 miles upstream  and contained several hundred people. These structures are recreations of semi permanent building, 'Yehawkans', the natives would of built out of poles and woven reed or grass matting.

There were several of these wooden sculptures scattered among the native houses. Never did find out what the significance of them was, but they were eerily compelling for some reason.

Inside one of the homes with wooden benches covered over with animal skins and a nice wood fire in the center of each. It seemed very cozy to me the day I was there as it was quite windy and cold outside.

Wooden and ceramic bowls and pots along with gourd and turtle shell utensils.

A few of the chickens roaming the site. Had to stop and have a little 'chicken time' with the girls and their friend.

Canoe construction would of been a useful thing to know because of all of the rivers, streams and bays in the area. It still boggles my mind that you can cut down and hollow out a huge old oak or pine tree using nothing but fire, stone axes, sharpened bones and antlers and a few clam shells. I guess anything is possible if you have a lot of time and you don''t know any other way of doing it.

You never really think about how labor intensive an activity like building a fence all around a couple hundred acres would be until you come across something that reminds you. A great idea for using up the outside edges of logs for a useful purpose other than just for firewood. I like the wood pins to hold it all together.