We had nice weather while in Charlottesville. On our first full day (Thursday), it was sunny and in the 70s and it was only a short walk to the University of Virginia (UVA) campus. We took a historical tour of the original campus area. Our tour started at the Rotunda which originally was the library designed by Thomas Jefferson. Our tour guide was a volunteer student from the university guide service. Students that give tours can choose topics which they want to emphasize. Our tour guide talked a lot about the inequities that have occurred in UVAs history. She talked about the use of slaves not only to build the early campus building, but to handle cleaning, the groundskeeping, cooking, and laundry. While emancipation ended the use of slaves at the university, students of color were not admitted to UVA until the 1950s. UVA was not a co-ed university until 1970 and it was basically a white man’s university for much of its history. Interestingly, the female population has grown to 55% while the black population is only 6%. She also talked about eugenic research that was done at the university in the early 20th century with to prove a genetic difference that proved blacks were inferior to white people.
The original
buildings are still a part of the campus and the original student rooms are now
used as honors housing for 4th year students. The rooms are now single rooms, however;
bathroom facilities are shared and students can be seen wandering around in
robes going to and from the showers.
Just a short walk away from the Rotunda is the Memorial to Enslaved Labors, memorializing the lives of the slave laborers at UVA.
After our tour of the campus, we walked to the historic downtown area of Charlottesville and the pedestrian street. We were told that when they decided to create a pedestrian street, it was modelled after the pedestrian area of Burlington, Vermont. It was nicer than Burlington’s as it had full sized trees and wide areas with outdoor seating for restaurants. We ate outside at th e Botanical Plant-based Fare. They had many great vegan options and we both had rice bowls that were quite good.
That evening we went
back to the pedestrian area to the old theater built in the early 1900s. We saw “Good” which is a play with David
Tenant in it. The show was the filming of a live production. It was well done, but it was about Nazi
Germany and it was a somber show.
Our next day, we did
a shorter campus walk and saw areas we hadn’t seen on Thursday. We also walked in a wooded area on a knoll
overlooking the campus. The area was
called O’Hill and has a variety of trails for walking, running, and mountain biking. The land is owned by the university and we took
a trail that to the observatory at the top.
The observatory was opened to the public this evening, but the weather
forecast was for clouds and it was already cloudier while we were there. We continued our walk through another part of
the campus. Many of the campus
residential areas reminded us of Miami of Ohio (where Thom and I met), with the
brick buildings and light butterscotch yellowy trim and the open quad areas
between the residential halls. The
campus is pretty, especially the older areas.
The next day we left
around 9 am for Shenandoah National Park at the start of the Blue RidgeMountain Parkway for a 4.2-mile hike to Humpback Rock and the Humpback Rock
Loop Trail. It was a beautiful, sunny
days with highs in the high 50s to low 60s up on the ridge. The hike was beautiful and there were awesome
views of the valleys. There were a lot
of people out hiking today, but it was not overly crowded. We ended up hiking between 5 and 6 miles.
After our hike, we
drove down to the Afton Valley. We were meeting Thom’s Uncle Ken and cousins; Kenny, Janice, and Patty (as well as
Patty’s husband, Mike). We had a late
lunch or early dinner at the Blue Mountain Brewery in Afton. It’s claim to fame is “Virginia’s First Rural
Brewery. It sits in the Afton Valley
with a gorgeous view of the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was warm enough to sit outside in their
beautiful outdoor venue, with perfect
view of the Blue Ridge Mountains. It is
a blue sky, sunny day making the view even more beautiful. Thom and I played corn hole until we Uncle
Ken and Kenny arrived. While it is warm
enough to sit outside in this valley venue, we did decide that a sunny spot was
best. Thom orders a flight of 10 samples
of their brews and we were all able to sample thei ones we wanted to. They had a interesting blueberry beer, but I
settled on the Kolsch-styled beer called Kolsch 151. I did also liked the Dark Hollow, which is a
Barrel Aged Imperial Stout. The food
choices were varied inclu niding thin crusted crunchy pizza, burgers, salads and a really nice
power bowl with kale, quinoa, dried fruit, walnuts, and grilled tofu (or other
protein sou frces). It also came with
goat cheese, which I skipped. Thom and I
caught up on their families (kids,
grandkids) and themselves. No one can
remember for sure the last time they were all together. We have seen Uncle Ken and Janice more
recently at family events in Ohio. Uncle
Ken and Thom’s aunt have lived in Waynesboro, Virginia for as long as I
remember and we haven’t spent as much time with Thom’s dad’s family as Thom’s mom’s
family.
We sat outside until
the sun went behind the mountain peaks and then it quickly cooled down. We went inside and sat by a fireplace in some
comfy couches. It was a wonderful
afternoon and we enjoyed catching up. At
about 5:45 pm we left to head back to our apartment. We knew that UVA was playing football at home
and that the game was in the fourth quarter.
Our place is really close to the stadium. We got back and there were roads block making
it challenging to get to our place. In
fact, it took us about a half hour to figure out which roads were open, so that
we could actually get there. UVA won,
but we smed to be in a quiet area and we didn’t hear any noisy parties.
Tomorrow, we leave
to head to my nieces for Thanksgiving. We
had a nice stay in Charlotteville.
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