Dateline July 28, 2017, North Carolina and Rhode Island
We have carried you north with us before, so we will spare you the repeat stops, but there were new places along the road this time, and good golf, worth the telling.
Asheville and Black Mountain. Our next stop was Mama Gertie's RV Park, just outside Asheville, a very nice place set on a hillside so that every site looks down on the ones below. The only trouble was getting level; we slid our plastic levelers under the wheels so we would not roll out of bed and down toward the driver's seat in the night. In the morning we played Black Mountain Golf Course, in Black Mountain, North Carolina. The views were wonderful and the greens a little slow, but it was a lovely day of golf.
Back at Mama Gertie's we put some hamburgers on the grill and enjoyed a little rum, then a good night's sleep before heading to Raleigh.
Raleigh. We drove over to Raleigh to see our daughter Kieran at our son Courtney's home. Courtney and Amanda and the two lovely grandchildren, Izzy and Finley, were off in Vermont, but there was room to park the RV in the driveway and hook up the power, which we needed, because it was about ninety-nine degrees and the air conditioning was no luxury. Kieran set us up with a tee time at North Carolina State's course, Lonnie Poole, and we loaded the clubs into her car. We had not quite reckoned on teeing off at three in the afternoon in that heat.
Lonnie Poole is the only college course Arnold Palmer ever designed, a tough track trapped from tee to green, and it is magnificent. We had a wonderful time, give or take a touch of heat stroke.
We played all eighteen, some holes good and some not, then went with Kieran to meet her friends for a cocktail downtown, a fine bunch of young people. With the next day forecast near a hundred again, we gave up on the outdoors and went to see Dunkirk instead, which was spectacular. We had a lovely time with Kieran, and somehow came away without a single picture of her and John; we will fix that when we pass back through in September.
From there we drove up through the Shenandoah Valley meaning to play golf the next day, but the heat had worn us out, so we took a day of rest and made an easy drive to our son James's house in Wind Gap, Pennsylvania. His wife Mary was out of town, so we picked up dinner for James and the grandchildren, Collin and Liza. We will be back over Labor Day for a proper visit. We had a wonderful evening, and in the morning little Collin, all of four years old, spotted us from the living room window at six and got his dad to bring him down. There is nothing like a four-year-old's hug to start the day. Then we were on the road for Rhode Island.
Rhode Island. We pulled into the Ashaway RV resort, a Passport America park, so we had it at half price, and what a place: a big pool, tennis courts, a children's area, plenty to do. The sites were not very flat, but our levelers saved us again. In the morning we played a local course, Winnapaug, in Westerly, a lovely test of golf with fine views out over the water.
Newport. The next day we drove to Newport to walk the historic district and ride the ocean road past the mansions. The finest stop of all was Trinity Church.
Janice's dear friend Marty Newton Skelley and her husband Jeff were married here some thirty-odd years ago, in a beautiful ceremony. A kind gentleman showed us around and told us the history. The parish was founded in 1698, the oldest Episcopal one in Rhode Island, and the present Georgian building was designed by Richard Munday and raised in 1725 and 1726. The pews were once boxed off into sections owned by the leading families of the day; they are open to everyone now, each marked with its history.
The stained-glass windows were mostly given by families in memory of those they had lost, and one of them is a Tiffany. That one honors Cornelius Vanderbilt the second, nephew of the old Commodore, whose Newport mansion was the famous Breakers. Over the years the southeast winds had pushed the whole building into a six-degree lean, until steel beams were run through it to set it straight again.
The pulpit stands in the very center of the church, the way it was done in those days, and it is still where the clergy give the sermon every Sunday.
We walked through more of the old district and then out along Ocean Drive to see the mansions, some open to visitors and many still lived in; it is something to imagine how you might live if the Powerball ever came your way. Janice fell to remembering the days when she and Marty and Jeff and their old friend Nancy Richardson, now in heaven, spent many an afternoon at the beach and the local spots just up the street from Marty's place. We enjoyed every minute of it, then headed back to Ashaway for dinner and a good night's sleep. Next stop, Janice's Aunt Margaret and Uncle Bill.
