Aug-Dec

Nothing really happened to speak of, travel-wise, when we got back from out East in mid-August. Not true...Erica did go to London for work, but apart from getting to attend the England/Switzerland international soccer match at Wembley Stadium (upon my suggestion), and a play in the West End, she mostly just worked.

In October was ¡BONGHOCHO!, i.e., Bongho 8, which had a Latin theme (margaritas, not togas). We beat USC gratifyingly, and/but James stayed home with his nana and papa.

In December, the greater Gholson clan once again headed to Puerto Rico just after Christmas.  James still likes to tell us that most of the buses, trains, and planes he sees are "going to Puerto Rico", so it apparently made a huge impression on him.  That trip will be he subject of my next post.


Grant

I know it's been awhile since I rapped at ya

You might have noticed that the last entry in this blog is nigh on a year ago, when we were in Stone Harbor.  Much has happened since that time, but/and because we are going back there in a few weeks, and I plan on covering that trip in some detail once again, I figured it was important to catch quickly all the readers (*ahem*) up on what's gone on in the interim.

To start, I found this saved on my desktop.  It's an entry that was started last trip, but never finished.

Uncle Joe is a wine buff, and drinks the good stuff.  I must have spent the better part of a few afternoons reading past issues of Wine Spectator to get caught up on all the in-goings on of the wine world, which seems to be mostly a world where vineyard financiers hold elaborate tasting balls for one another while flannel-shirted vintners do the actual work themselves (or, rather, oversee the work that Mexican laborers do).  So, pretty much like everything else, basically.  Anyway, Joe had brought a case of fine wine to the shore, owning to the fact that when Justin, Erica, and I visited him and Mary Kay in the Spring, we clearly drank more of his wine than he was expecting. [ed. note this entry just ends here.]

Here's another entry I found, from later in the trip when we went to Molly's house in Frederick, MD.  Beautiful house, by the way, and they've improved a lot on it since then, too.

State feathers!

SUPERBOSS day today..  The morning was pedestrian, but by 9am we were already on the way to Harper’s Ferry, site of an important Civil War battle won by the Confederacy (boo), as well as, more famously, the ending place of the radical abolitionist John Brown’s attempt to lead a group of freed black slaves into Maryland in 1859.  What’s cool, besides most of the things in this old town (old for America, at least), is that when you drive there from Frederick, you have to pass through a tiny sliver of Virginia on the way to West Virginia.  Erica says that doesn’t count as a new state for James, but who cares, she’s wrong.  Anyway, we ended up driving through that itty part 3 times over the course of the day, so it definitely counts.  Congrats to having been in three states today, James!

Harper’s Ferry is located where the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers crotch, with the Potomac taking the name of the newly confluenced river, before flowing down to D.C. and out then out to the ocean.  The panoramas are great, and here’s a few samplins’.

Lovely view of West Virginia's easternmost point, AND, just at the riverbank below us, the state's lowest point in elevation!

The ammunition depot where John Brown met his demise

James not too sure about this war of 1812 reenactor guy

After the ‘Ferry, we drove straight north to the battlefields of Antietam, site of the single bloodiest battles and there milled about for a bit.[...]

That's it.  That's how I finished the report for that the trip.

In the next post, I'll catch you up on what's happened since then.