This morning is overcast and 55ºF - cool but projecting sunny later in the day. We bathed and rolled down to the breakfast bar at Hyatt Place. Great scrambled eggs, pork link sausage, bagels, fruit and the other accoutrements. We scored some caffeine (they don’t offer an intravenous hook-up so we opted for cups.) We touched base with cousin Marcia Chaves and made arrangements to meet at her house around 10:30 AM to continue our exploration of Fredericksburg.
We drove to her pre 1800 stone house on the banks of the Rappahanock River and toured the home, perused old family pictures, enjoyed a cup of tea and then toured her extensive garden and then to her art studio. Fredericksburg suffered a huge snow/freezing rain in January of this year which inflicted huge damage to trees, understory and shrubbery, crushing and breaking boughs all over the area. Marcia’s old boxwoods, magnolia trees, and even tall sycamores suffered immensely. She is still slowly cleaning it up. She and her late husband Juan moved into this home in 1972. It floods frequently as the river rapidly rises due to upriver runoff, constantly causing loss. Marcia valiantly recovers after each occurrence, pays the flood insurance premiums and despairs of the next “big one” that will have water five feet deep in her living room. What amazing stamina.
We next loaded into the Camry rental and took a short tour of the neighborhood before heading to a sandwich shop for a luncheon break. We stopped at a recommended Italian delicatessen for black bean soup, salads and a Reuben sandwich, nothing like the Omaha original, but satisfying. Following lunch wandered down the walk of the shopping center to search out a recommended yarn store on behalf of the prime knitter in our family, Abigail. Alas, the store had moved, which we could easily find, but learned from a person cleaning up the vacated store that the store was only open Wednesday through Saturday. Out of luck!
We drove to the 1740 Silversmith House near the river in old Fredericksburg. This is now the Fredericksburg Artist Cooperative Gallery. Marcia’s art is regularly featured at this gallery and they were very happy for our visit, seeing Marcia and chatting about current shows. We spent a good half hour looking at the current show, and found some things we were very interested in. We have one piece of Marcia’s work we purchased from this gallery a few years ago, which now hangs with another of hers in our bedroom at home so it was great to visit the facility.
Next we drove back across the river to visit Hampton and Bunny Covert’s home.
We left Hamp’s home, drove past some old Covert and Kennedy family homes nearby and then ended our afternoon at 4:00 at Pete and Cindy Covert Marshall’s home for cocktails, dinner and lots of conversation. The whole family (except for Sara and Jim Beam who live some 70 miles away and didn’t re-join the party,) gathered again as we sat on the patio, enjoying a beer or wine, chattering away. This time photos were gathered. We dined on some wonderful wraps, barbecued pork, Cole slaw and macaroni salad. We
This was a long and fun filled day of reminiscence. We were back in our hotel room at a respectable 8:00 PM and relaxed. No fire alarm malfunctions tonight, but house cleaning missed us and we discovered that meant no room coffee for tomorrow morning. On check with the front desk, they could not find where housekeeping hid the coffee supply, so we are resigned to getting up tomorrow to journey down to the breakfast room for early coffee. We have had worse problems in our travels so we let it go. A good day.
