Hampton Inn
From St. Augustine, Florida to Fort Chiswell, Virginia
02.02.20 [Sunday, February 2, 2020]
55F, sunny
Friend Judy treated us like royalty during our stay, with stellar
restaurants and great historic sites and activities. She has been my friend
since 1967 when we studied together in Aix en Provence, France our junior year
of college. Nebraska meets Pennsylvania!
Besides being tour guide par excellence, she decided that I needed
to purchase some clothes that are out of my comfort zone. She talked about
yoyos and oyos—young old people and old people acting old. We had a lot of laughs this trip! This is a
warning to Erie friends—be prepared!
Judy and Janie
One other item. This is not a movie blog by any means, but each
night we chose movies to watch. Thursday night we watched Spotlight,
Judy’s choice. This is not a light
subject matter and despite being a very good movie, it would not have been my
choice.
From the beginning I wanted to watch They Shall Not Grow Old again, the World War I
movie/documentary by Peter Jackson, but it is not on Netflix now. So, since I
liked the song, “There Won’t Be Many Coming Home” by Roy Orbison, a song in the
movie The Hateful Eight, I opted for that movie on Friday
night. I sort of forgot the premise,
the violence, and lots of other things in that movie. Oh my oh my. Quentin
Tarantino is an amazing filmmaker who is not afraid of violence, exploding
violence. Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell,
Walton Goggins star.
On Saturday night, TK got to pick, but we all decided to go with a
comedy. Right away he chose The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, a Coen
Brothers movie with Liam Neeson and James Franco, among others. After watching about 75% of this movie of
vignettes full of violence, blood, and nudity, we called it quits to review the
definition of COMEDY. It appears that none of us knows the definition of
light and comedy.
At that point, TK figured out that he could use his Samsung phone
with Judy’s Roku to get access to They Shall Not Grow Old and we
watched that truly great achievement by Peter Jackson after all. Of course,
that movie is not a comedy either.
On this palindromic morning we said goodbye to a great hostess and
her dear little dog, Sunny. On the road again! Thank goodness it was Sunday so
traffic through Jacksonville, Florida and Charlotte, North Carolina was quite
easy. By 5:30 we arrived in Wytheville, Virginia, with similar temperature to St.
Augustine.
Every year we say we push ourselves too hard and end up going all
day without eating and so on. TK does a stellar job of driving, but it is
tiring. We found a small Mexican restaurant near the hotel, Happy Cinco de Mayo. The cuisine was fine
and the restaurant was not busy. Lexie, our server, was cheery.
Now we are settled in to watch Kansas City win! We hope!
