The first stop, as I headed east, was the Marion Wade Center in Wheaton.

The Marion Wade Center is a small museum and a research center with a huge repository of works by and about seven British authors: Owen Barfield, G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, George MacDonald, Dorothy L. Sayers, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams. This is the desk, and a bust, of C.S. Lewis.

A bust and the desk of J.R.R. Tolkien.

Everyone wants to know, is this THE wardrobe that inspired The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. After all, there are several wardrobes out there, with ties to C.S. Lewis.

This one has a pretty good provenance.

On to another home of history and letters, Monticello.

I visited with granddaughters Lana and Audrey.

We enjoyed a nice chat with the former president, actually actor Bill Barker, who excels in the role. He has been portraying Jefferson for three decades, the last four years as part of the programming at Monticello.

The interior of Monticello is fascinating, unlike any other president’s home. I haven’t been in them all, but I’m pretty sure that’s accurate.

You can still see the University of Virginia, which he founded, and the Rotunda, which he designed, through the trees, though just barely.

You can also see what Wisconsin looked like, mapwise, during the Jefferson administration, a half century before statehood. Still Indian territory.

The presentation about slavery at Monticello has changed hugely since the previous time I visited, three decades ago, based on research that’s been done on Sally Hemings and her family.

After Monticello, we visited the nearby city of Gordonsville.

It turns out that getting your picture taken with the Gordonsville sign is a good way to meet the local police department, although it’s not exactly illegal.

For the second year in a row we visited the Woodstock Tower, on top of a mountain in the George Washington National Forest.

The view of the Blue Ridge Mountains and Shenandoah National Park was beautiful, though not as colorful as it would be a few weeks later.

To the west, the Shenandoah River Valley.

Shenandoah River close-up

The other amazing excursion on this visit was with Sam and Fiona at the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C.

After lunch we hung out under the sycamore trees along the Potomac and Lana did the same thing I used to do with the sycamore tree in my grandma’s front yard: pick off the bark pieces.

Selfies on the swing.

It was a beautiful day.

All too soon it was time to say goodbye.

And follow the early morning fog through the mountains toward home.