Almost Heaven

On Tuesday, we packed up the car and left the DC area after spending six incredible days there.  I had been told, prior to our trip, that a week there wouldn't be nearly enough, and that is completely correct.  I think we could have spent a month in DC and barely scratch the surface of everything there.

After having spent some time driving around Alexandria, Virginia, and seeing the lovely old houses, and headed toward West Virginia.  As we traveled west, the humidity got lighter and the terrain became more hilly and wooded.  I saw several sets of three crosses along the highway, and wondered about these. These were huge, probably 15 or more feet high, so these were no road-side memorials.  Out of curiosity, I looked this up on my iPhone and discovered that there were 352 such sets of three crosses in West Virginia alone.  A man named Bernard Coffindaffer  placed hundreds of crosses in many states and in other areas in the world.  They were inspiring for me, especially after the amazing event of Saturday on August 28 at the Lincoln Memorial.  

Virginia, West Virginia, and Kentucky were lush and gorgeous, with all the rolling hills and forests so thick you could only guess at what was beyond them.  Surprisingly, it got less humid as we headed into Kentucky.  I don't know if that's typical, but I expected the opposite to be true. 

We had kind of a long day of driving, and ended up in Lexington, Kentucky. We discovered the morning after our stop there that we were near the site of a former race track, and at the old site was a really beautiful race horse cemetery.  So on Wednesday morning, we drove around a bit to see what other treasures Lexington had.  We drove through Frankfort, and found the Capitol building.  It was remarkable in that it was sort of surrounded by trees and residential areas, not really in an urban setting, as most Capitol buildings we've seen seem to be.