Road Trip Continued: An American Stately Home

Hampton, north of Baltimore, was once, arguably, America's finest house and at one time also its largest, built in the mid-18th century. It was in the same family, the Ridgeleys, until 1948.  There are stables, where thoroughbred racehorses were once bred, carriage houses, formal gardens, old specimen trees. Oh yes and slave quarters.

It's now a National Historical Site. We were there too early to take the tour but we explored the grounds, on the dew-wet grass, seeing the great house through the morning mists.
  You can walk down a wooded track to the Ridgeley cemetery: all stone angels, a mausoleum

 and old family names.

 This was the saddest - a lamb topping the tombstone of baby John, who lived less than a year.

Some of the formal gardens are still there, though much of the grounds have been turned into a suburban housing estate.

The original orangery burned down in the 1920s - this is a reconstruction.

The ice house

 With its underground vaults

Would be a great place for what Americans call a murder mystery.

A Baltimore Sunset

"Only In America" Moment

 Spotted on a car back window in Emmitsburg, Maryland:

The First American Saint

An appropriate topic for Sunday. After meandering through some picturesque and very English-looking towns on the Pennsylvania-Maryland border,like Mercersburg, Greencastle and Waynsboro,

  We came upon Emmitsburg, Maryland and the shrine of the first native-born American saint, Elizabeth Ann Seton.

 She converted to Catholicism in 1805, after the death of her husband and is considered the founder of Catholic education in the United states and of the first order of nuns there. (Some of her order did sterling work nursing wounded soldiers in the Civil War.) Interestingly, she's also revered as a saint by the Episcopalians. This gracious basilica contains her tomb.

Nearby are the early convent buildings. Elizabeth died of tuberculosis, aged 46, in 1821.

There's a touching cemetery with rows of simple nuns' gravestones.

 That much further south, the autumn colours were still glorious.

And it was all very serene and peaceful.

A nice touch was a case containing Elizabeth's white silk dancing shoes, one upside down to show the worn stitched leather sole. Apparently she loved dancing when she was young and kept the shoes all her life.

The Golden Hills of Pennsylvania

  As sister-in-law and I commenced our drive down to Florida, we had cause to remember another Universal Truth. The best views and at this time of year the best leaf colours always happen when you're motoring along with cars in front and behind and no way to stop and take a picture. Still, we paused for a picnic at a sweet forested spot, with hardly anyone else there but us and autumn already chilling the air.

This was high up, somewhere near the Buchanan state forest, Buchanan being the chap who was President before the Civil War.

As always, Americans are anxious to help with suggestions.

As will streams the world over, I suppose.
 The wilds of Pennsylvania are eye-wateringly beautiful, with winding mountain roads, steep inclines with their runaway truck escape lanes and endless views over rolling, forested hills where bears and elk roam and there's no vsible habitation for miles. And this in the populous east, not the Wild West.

This is far from the best view we had but at least we could pull off and stop. You get the picture..

On the Road

 This blog is off on another road trip south. Watch this space!

Western NY Idyll: Autumn Memories

Wildflower paintings by the roadside

And leaf paintings in our garden

Faraway hills

 In the sunset .

And vapour trails in the dawn over Insterstate 86

 
The colours of a misty morning

And a sunny one

The old stony track up the hill behind the house

And the meadow above

The glimpse of a lake

 We're still hanging in there!