Harpers Ferry and Charles Town

June 25 -  Yea, a much better day!  I thought we would sleep really late but I got up about 8:30.  There was no hurry to be on our way so after breakfast and showers we left about 10:30 for Harpers Ferry.  We went through Shepherdstown and on the way to Harpers Ferry and stopped at the O’Hurley’s old time store.  What a fun neat place.  Lots of old games, paper dolls, sock monkeys, musical instruments, hand made porch furniture, kitchen items, hardware, just so much stuff and we enjoyed reminiscing.  We didn’t buy anything but might go back.

 

Main street in Harpers Ferry

It took about 20 minutes to get to the visitor center of Harpers Ferry National Park.  This is the 3^rd time we’ve been and we tried to piece our previous trips together.  The first time was with the kids and we could drive into the town and park under the railroad tracks.  The last time the new visitor center 2 miles from town was new and you park there and they shuttle you into the town.  There are only 300 people in the town and they drive right through the historic district and the park can’t get the town to close the streets.  They won’t let tourists park there as there is no place to park and there would be too much traffic.  So we rode the shuttle and it was nice not having to find a place to park.  It was a pretty light tourist day but there were several school groups or summer camp groups, so a couple of times we re-routed to avoid all the kids.

 

We had a really good visit and there were several new exhibits and we walked across the

Jefferson's Rock

Shenandoah River on the pedestrian bridge to the C & O Canal Lock 33.  The new exhibit on John Brown was very good, with 3 short movies regarding the 3 stages of his attempt to free the slaves:  his attack on the Harper’s Ferry Arsenal and his trial and his hanging.  We had a nice lunch at a little café that was excellent.  Bill has chicken quesadilla with salad and I had a gyro salad with cucumber dressing.  Yum!  That fueled us up to climb to the top of the hill overlooking the town to Jefferson’s Rock.  We’d never done that before.  There’s also an old church skeleton up there also.  It was really hot out and several of the buildings were without AC today.  Our last stop at the Bookstore was so refreshing.  I just wanted to stand in front of the AC it felt so good.  We caught the shuttle back to the VC and drove on to Charles Town.

 

John Brown was tried in Charles Town and hanged there.  We stopped at their Visitor Center and got some information.  The courthouse was across the street and we got to see inside but they were close to closing or we could have gone in and walked around.  At the time of the trial there were no rooms, just one large barnlike space and the judge was at the back of the room.  The jail was across the street.  Once he was found guilty he was taken to a field that was outside of town at the time and he and the others tried were hanged and the wood from the scaffold was used to build a porch on a house in town.  The general location of the hanging is marked but it’s now part of someone’s yard.

 

Then it was time to head home to check on Molly.  One of the rangers we hadn’t met came by and we talked a while, then a camper came and asked for change so he could put the proper amount in the Iron Ranger.  Since we ate a late lunch I made a late dinner and then we walked the campground.  There were just 3 sites taken.  There was a group of volunteer students that came today to do some painting with our volunteer coordinator and her assistant.  We saw them arrive this morning so wanted to see what they managed to get done.  There was quite a lot done, the site posts, the bag dispenser boxes, most of the grills and some of the fire pit rings.

 

We saw a deer behind us in the field but it didn’t come into our “yard”.

 

Then it was time for the first show of Rizzoli and Isles!