The Final Leg

We visited Dane's cousin, John, his wife, Janet and their twin sons, Robert and Jack in Washington D.C. They live in a really nice area of the city and have a beautiful home. All of our belongings were stowed safely in their garage for the night.


The next day we visited Susanna in the morning. She and Dane taught together in Russia and she is also taking a sabbatical. You would normally find her teaching in Seattle. It was another of those short and sweet visits.

Susanna and us

We were ready to leave D.C. only to discover our bikes were no longer in the back of our truck. Whoever decided to help themselves was kind enough to leave the front tire of Dane's bike dangling from the chain. So we filed a police report and left D.C. and our bikes behind.

We like The Andy Griffith Show (aka TAGS), especially Dane. So a natural place to stop on our way home was Mount Airy, the town Mayberry was based on. We were planning on camping, but rain dampened those plans and we found the cheapest motel that we could. The Blu Vue Motel was the seediest motel I've ever stayed at. There were spiders and spider webs and when Dane tried turning the shower on it wouldn't work, but rather water started streaming out from behind the bathtub onto the floor. We left ASAP the next morning. The place was redeemed in our minds a little bit when we discovered that it had been featured in the Andy Griffith show.

Dane with Andy and Opie!

The Jailhouse

While visiting the Andy Griffith Museum, we met the owner and friend of Andy Griffith, Emmitt Forrest. There was a character based on him on the Andy Griffith show. He owned Emmit's Fix-it Shop in the show. I asked him about Leon, the little boy in TAGS that randomly shows up dressed up in western clothes and eating a peanut butter sandwich. Mr. Forrest informed me that it was Opie's real life brother, Clint Howard.

One more interesting fact about Mount Arie. The world renown conjoined twins, Chang and Eng Bunker from Siam, lived there. They are where we get the term Siamese twins.

Thank you Miriam and Adam for letting us spend the night with you. Now we're back in Nashville!