The good days just keep coming and coming! Accompanied by Jim (its the weekend), we managed to pack in the very place at which the final surrender of the American Civil war was signed - who thought it was between Lee and Grant at Appomattox in Virginia? Yeah, me too!
In fact it was in a small farmhouse owned by the Bennett family, just outside Durham NC. The Bennetts lost both sons to the war but are forever immortalised for lending their modest homestead to Generals Sherman and Johnston for the final surrender of the South. Brilliant place to visit, and put more “fat on the bones” of my meagre knowledge of American history, linking as it did to slavery, the later segregation laws and the civil rights movement. If I could have returned immediately to Memphis for the National Civil Right Museum I would have done - for anyone reading, I recommend both! A road trip from the Outer Banks of NC to the western edges of Tennessee anyone?
As previously referred to, Durham’s early growth and economy was based on tobacco and the Duke family feature large. It seems that half the land is “Duke land” and the university occupies a great deal of it. But some has been reserved for beautiful gardens, laid out in a variety of styles - and the name of that plant is...? Where is my wife when I need her?
In between the two we managed a a deli lunch with Helens’s son Scott and his wife Natalie, and then we finished the day with a brewery visit - if this doesn’t sound like the perfect day, I don’t know what does?!
Oh, yeah, then we drank good red wine, had a late night snifter of the water of life, and finished last night’s Mexican Train - and I won! Perfect!
I won at Pooh Sticks too!!! Not that I am competitive or anything ;-)
Too many pictures to fit on the blog page today so there is a new North Carolina page on the Gallery 2019.