Greetings From Home

We spent nearly all day Monday in the car after gorging ourselves at the hotel breakfast buffet (and a good thing we did, since the first Subway we stopped at for lunch, outside Frostburg, Maryland, did not have veggie patties, so we had to go on to the next town to find them). We hadn't packed a picnic since rain was forecast on and off, but after a bit of morning drizzle in Ohio, we drove through the mountains in West Virginia and the southwestern tip of Pennsylvania in sunshine and 80-degree temperatures even at elevation. We stopped very briefly at God's Ark of Safety, the Noah's Ark "replica" being built by an evangelical church off Interstate 68, and we wanted to stop at Sidelong Hill in the Allegheny Mountains, but the visitor center was closed.

We got home in time for dinner (grilled cheese, since that was what we could do quickly), fed our poor neglected cats (who were spoiled by my mother and Hufflepants while we were away), and started unpacking and laundry (which is going to be a multi-day project, particularly since I have a dentist appointment in the morning that I'd forgotten all about till we got back). One of the Turner channels is showing Civil War movies this week, so we watched Glory, which we haven't seen since it was new, and the beginning of Gettysburg, which is still on but I'm too tired for it now. Here are some photos from Hopewell Culture National Historical Park, including some more of the mounds and some of the pipes, beads, and tools found buried inside the mounds: