Monticello

After a completely exhausting week of wall building and weeding it was time to take a break and go on a little excursion.  My roommate from college had to go down to Charlottesville and back from Philadelphia today and to break up the trip a bit she picked me up to go along for the ride.  We decided to also go to Monticello while we were down that way.  I'd visited there before, but it was a long time ago.

Monticello is a fascinating study in custom do-it-yourself architecture in an old school setting.  It was very interesting to see how Jefferson managed to incorporate so many of his own original ideas as it applied to making the house more practical and convenient and at the same time attractive and stylistically correct.  He truly made the house his own, and I can totally relate to that considering what we've been up to  for the past five years or so.  It's an extremely interesting and beautiful place to visit and I highly recommend it.

On the way out we decided to stop and get some peaches at the Carter Family Orchard.  That involved driving practically straight up the next mountain over.  The view at the top was well worth it and the photo below does not even begin to do it justice.  Plus it has that annoying smudge in the sky (or on my camera lens).

And for old times sake we went to Chick Filet.  Twice.  I had the exact same thing for lunch and dinner -  the basic sandwich with nothing except pickles and mayonnaise - and it was equally delicious both times.  Thankfully the Krispy Kreme seemed to be gone, which saved us from more fully over-reenacting some of our more unfortunate South Carolina eating habits in Charlottesville, VA.