The rest of the Eastern seaboard…

Our plan was to go to Washington DC to see the town but more importantly visit my friend Rajeev who I worked with at the Queen Elizabeth hotel in Montreal over 35 years ago. We kept in touch for many years then lost each other… then Facebook. He left Canada with his family about 30 years ago to take on the role of Hilton Executive Chef outside Washington in the Pentagon area. Once we were set up in our RV site, we set the GPS to Rajeev’s address and had a fantastic evening with him and Sarita, his wife.  We laughed and chatted like no time had passed. Alas, that was the only time we could get together as his hotel had some big VIP events which required him to work a lot and we only had a few days. Sadly, we took no pictures.

Our campground was called Fairfax Lake Park and we were there for 4 nights.

It is just 2 miles from the metro that goes into Washington DC so we bought a 3 day metro pass and hopped on and off for three days.

Albert and I walked all over that city. We walked the Mall. This is not a shopping mall. It is a massive greenspace with the Lincoln Memorial at one end and Generals Lee and Grant at the Capitol buildings at the other. There are lake sized reflecting pools along the way. Flanking the Mall are the White House, the Smithsonian Museums and the memorials of the wars including Korea, Vietnam, World Wars and Civil Wars.

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We saw the Lincoln Memorial with the two famous speeches on the walls that he gave while President.

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Hard to believe he was a Republican but that was then… It seems times have certainly deteriorated in that respect. In fact, we had a look in the Trump Hotel, and left some gold deposits in the gold accented restrooms. We didn’t bother using the entrance for the Presidential suite off to the side. The hotel is quite spectacular as it was an old post office that was remodeled. 

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The Martin Luther King Jr memorial was very modern and refreshing in comparison with the European style statues and fountains that line the parks. He emerges from a giant rock or mountain of granite surrounded by 14 of his quotes in the square. Very inspiring. He was a mountain of a man.

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To the side of the mall are many of the Smithsonian museums. All are free. We visited the American Museum of History and saw Edith and Archie Bunkers’s chairs, Julia Child’s kitchen, Dorothee’s ruby slippers, the Batmobile, Mohammed Ali’s red boxing gloves, and the muppet chef!! Ork de Bork Bork!!

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Washington has many beautiful buildings and of course lots of history that we learn in our text books. Most of it forgotten.  Impressive buildings were the train station, the irish pub with all the police logos from all over the world, the FBI headquarters that became iconic with Ephrem Zimbalist Jr as the head of the TV show “The FBI”. My career has usually considered the FBI the Food and Beverage Institute just like the CIA is the Culinary Institute of America. These spy vs spy things are for the birds.

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The day we went to the Pentagon, we just hopped on the metro and got off at Pentagon stop. We knew there would be security, but really you couldn’t even go anywhere outside of the parking lot unless you had an official tour or some other sort of clearance. We stopped to look at a bird house along the sidewalk. It was from Canada to help the population of Purple Martins, so we acted like this was the reason we were there, and feeling that this was some weird sort of Canadian joke. We thought it was funny anyway.

Speaking of Canada, we went to see the embassy and sat in the iconic Red Adirondack chairs that grace all our national parks and gave a shout out to west coast aboriginal artist Bill Reid,  and our friend Doug Zilkie who assisted Bill when his Parkinson’s was so severe he could not do the finishing work on the Spirit of the Haida Gwaii. There are just two of these bronzes, one at Vancouver Airport in the International wing and one at the Canadian Embassy. We have seen both. The Vancouver one looks green like jade (the Jade Canoe) and the Washington one is outside and is black (the Black Canoe). One more that I have seen is the original plaster casting in the Canadian Museum of History, in Ottawa. We went inside the building and were allowed only to use the WIFI and see the art gallery which was completely underwhelming with a few cartoons by Lynn Johnston, of “For Better Or Worse” fame.

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We considered going into the Smithsonian space museum, natural history, American Indian, Holocaust, and so many others but we also wanted to see the outside stuff and get some biking in at the park where we were camped. The Fairfax Lake park and surrounding areas around DC are very hilly and there are no straight roads. There is a fantastic transit system plus a long bikeway that joins the many surrounding communities together. This park is filled with mountain biking trails, walking and hiking trails. With spectacular fall colours and dry conditions, we poked through the well-maintained trails. With the cover of leaves over some of the rocky bits, I just relaxed and let my bike do all its own navigating. Good thing, because if I had seen some of the chunky rocks on the trail, I may have had more reservations with the speed we were traveling through them. Only fell once!! On a narrow trail that dropped off to the right. So, I tipped over to the right and watched my big heavy bike sail over me. Sigh. 

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We packed up and headed for Richmond, Virginia where I was catching a flight home and Albert was continuing on to the Blue Ridge Mountains near Roanoke in the western side of Virginia near the Shenandoah mountains. Albert dropped me off at a hotel near the airport so I could get my early flights home. Even though I am newly “retired”, I am still involved with Skills Canada and BC will host the national competition in June 2020. Since that is my province, I am tasked with chairing the organization of our cooking competition and the planning meeting was at the end of October. It was good to see my folks, Alberts family, our son, a few friends, get the car insurance organized, and have a bit of time on Vancouver Island. The meeting went smoothly, and I came back to Virginia ten days later with a terrible cold and itching to get on the road again. While I was away Albert found his own adventures throughout the mountains in Virginia….(Albert’s tale to be in the next post. Guns, lost, heavy metal, bike crashes and injuries… it’s all there…)

Albert picked me up at the Richmond Airport at midnight. I left my voice in Vancouver so telling him everything at a time of day that is not my best conversationally was difficult then add the voice thing. We drove back to Pocahontas State park where he had set up our campsite earlier in the day.

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He told me some of his adventures (related above) and I slept like a log for 10 hours. (add story of grocery store that has a bar in the center of it – men drink while women shop).

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We stayed 2 more nights at Pocahontas as there were some good trail systems near and in the park. All the parks that we stayed at had the evidence of great family camping. They had pools with great slides and water features, tennis courts and wonderful trails for hiking and biking. Pools were emptied and deserted but the campers were still in the parks. When Albert was biking without me while I was at the coast, he had a big fall that hurt his hand and busted his dropper post on his bike seat. So while we were riding we found a bike store for some repairs. Great opportunity to catch up on blog writing. We found a library and completed another entry. The next day after picking up the bike we hit the open road. I was hoping to be healthy soon.

We were off towards Savannah. Usually we drive 3-5 hours a day and Savannah, Georgia was over 6 hours from Southern Virginia where we were camped so we found a Harvest Host winery to stop for the night. We stayed at Cartersville Winery in a small place called Timmonsville, South Carolina. We tasted his wine made with muscatel grape. Can’t say it was a favourite but we bought a bottle of white. Wine in the south is sweet with high acid, and while interesting, it is not a wine that we find easy to swallow. When he asked what kind of wine we like, and we said “dry”, he said “good luck”, and we proceeded to taste his driest offering and continued on to the sweeter ones after that. A tasting was $5 and it came with a small plastic stemless wine glass. We each tasted the wine, so he charged us twice. I couldn’t finish the small sweet pours he gave us. He was super nice, had a big BBQ camping area beside the winery and we parked there. Nice and level, and two other campers beside us. These people had booked their stays through a website membership called “BoondockersWelcome” where people can list their property and service available (electric, water, nothing) and campers can stay for free for up to a few days or a week. It is a nice way to meet travelers or to meet locals if you are traveling. We met a retired couple from Ontario that was staying a few days and another young couple from Florida who were considering becoming full timers (people like us who live in their RV’s full time) so they were trying out the lifestyle for a few months first. Turns out the young couple had a few things in common with us. He said he was a chef who grew up in Montreal apprenticing at the Queen Elizabeth hotel at least 10 years after I left there. He worked with the tyrant French chef who took over with the brigade change that followed the management change. The QE was a Hilton hotel for 25 years, the contract ended, and CN hotels took it over. They owned it. Years later all the CN and CP hotels amalgamated to become the Fairmont chain that circles the globe.  I never asked this fellows name. Why? Because he was one of those opinionated, apparently well trained, prima donna chefs. I am sure he was probably a good cook but there was no way he was going to let a “nobody chef” like me get close.  He boasted about $500 bottles of wine, working with Alain Ducasse, Paul Bocuse and being involved with the Bocuse D’Or. He had never heard of Robert Sulatyky, Canada’s highest scoring Bocuse competitor, and Bocuse Team USA mentor alongside chef Thomas Keller. He did acknowledge that Thomas Keller is famous for running a respectful calm kitchen and that being a tyrant is not necessarily helping the industry. He said he had his CMC, was teaching Certified Master Chef classes with the Miami University or College or perhaps it was the Culinary Institute. Apparently, the largest university/college in Florida. He said he set it up. Ugh. His wife/girlfriend hailed from Holland originally, and was level 4 WSET and had great knowledge of the Wine Spirits side of the equation. She was super friendly, and like many front of house people, was able to skillfully keep a gentle tone to all of the conversations we were having. He did share a nice bottle of Bordeaux with the 6 of us that he claimed to have some involvement in as an importer. The Ontario couple barely got a word in. You meet all kinds of people on the road. Maybe his story was legit but he wasn’t giving us all the facts. Perhaps he will read this blog and let us know how important he is… really…

The next morning, we headed for Savanna Oaks RV park just outside of Savannah. This little RV park was shaded by all those sleepy Live Oak trees dripping with moss that you read about in Harlequin romances. Well that’s how I remember hearing of them as a teenager. We had heard about it as a great southern city to see the old South lifestyle and the downtown with its stately manors and paddle-wheelers that still ply the waters of the Savannah River for enthusiastic tourists.

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Savannah is now a sleepy historic city with a wealth of cotton history in strategically located old buildings along the river, a fantastic candy store and the Live Oak and moss that define the flora of the south. This is not a town for people in a wheelchair. There are stairs, cobblestones, uneven sidewalks and roots of the big Live Oak trees pushing up what was a level walkway 50 years before. But it is beautiful, friendly, sleepy and calm. There are quirky shops and award-winning southern BBQ. We had to do some tasting. We tried out Wiley’s Championship BBQ. Pretty good and our first indulgence of that local food genre.

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While we were in Savannah the town was setting up for the Savannah Food and Wine Festival, which by all rights you would think we would want to go to, but we didn’t. What??!! It was expensive plus 30% US/CAD exchange. We had just gone out for BBQ and we were happy shopping in the local grocery store for typical stuff that the locals cook and enjoying it at our trailer. We spent one day at the beach on Tybee Island as it was recommended for biking. But when we got there it was more of a cute little seaside tourist town with big beaches, empty streets, happy hours and wetlands. The lighthouse was interesting. We rode around and made our way back to camp and the laundry room at the RV park. Exciting!!

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After Savannah we headed towards Louisiana turning right at Jacksonville, Florida and starting on our way west. This was the first time we were headed towards home. The transformation from the Washington unionist history to The South and its history of economics built on the Slave populations that grew the cotton, rice, sugar and everything else that sustained a plantation system was remarkable. On the way towards Jacksonville we stopped at the Hofwyl-Broadfield rice plantation that is a state historic site in Georgia. But it no longer has rice growing for many reasons including proximity to the ocean and hurricane storm surges that ruin the rice and the wetlands for growing rice.  The descriptions of the horrible tolls it took on its slaves is incomprehensible. We took the tour of the old house, cattle shed and slave quarters.  The tour guide was very adamant that we understand the horrible conditions the slaves endured. This plantation was also not an easy place for the owners either which spoke largely to the immensely horrible conditions of its unpaid workers. It was a very modest plantation and the last of the line of five generations of owners passed it to the State when she died in 1973. 

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That night we opted to say at another Harvest Host in a community called Live Oak, Florida. It was a few miles off the I-10 highway that traverses the Southern USA. It travels from Jacksonville, Florida to Santa Monica, California and was to become our friend for the next couple of months. The Gan-Eden farm raises goats, turkeys, ducks, sheep, geese and farm dogs who would guard the animals. We had a tour of the farm, bought some goat meat, chicken, jellies, vinegars and pesto.

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We bade farewell the next day and headed for Big Lagoon State Park just outside of Pensacola, Florida. We were heading into bayou gator territory…