Winchester and the Snow White Grill

We're in Winchester for an overnight. Again, since I started blogging on the Middle East at work I haven't been posting as often to the family blog. Mostly now it's when we're out of town doing something interesting, though last week — when I didn't post at all — we did do the great Lincoln bicentennial exhibit at the Library of Congress, which combined with the National Museum of American History Lincoln exhibit which I had already posted about (and there's a video on our family-and-friends YouTube page), plus our visit to the newly opened David Willis House in Gettysburg, plus a still-to-do reopened Ford's Theatre and a visit to Lincoln's summer white house at the Soldier's Home, we're immersing Sarah in a lot of Lincoln for the 200th.

But that was last weekend. This weekend we decided to get out of Dodge since the weather forecast sounded good — but there's a catch. It's sunny and warm all right: 93 degrees (our van temperature was showing 95). IN APRIL. A little too hot, so we've been snapping at each other, and we abandoned the idea of doing some of the many civil war sites in the area (Battles close to town: First and Second Winchester, First, Second and Third Winchester/Opequon. A few miles farther out: Cedar Creek, Fisher's Hill, Cool Spring, Stephenson's Depot, etc.etc. . . . Winchester claims to have changed hands 72 times in the Civil War. To get there they have to count every time a cavalry scout rode through town, but it was a busy place. Due to the heat we limited ourselves to the Old Court House Civil War Museum. It's air conditioned.

We did stumble on Old Town Winchester beginning a week-long celebration of Apple Blossom Festival, which concludes next weekend. We ate at the Snow White Grill, which I've posted about before, and which is still great, but also now has its own website, since it's celebrating its 60th anniersary. History and photos here; the all-important menu here; like Fred & Red's in Joplin, it's the sort of place they should make a National Historic Landmark. Or National Historic Greasy Spoon, a new designation for preservation I could really get behind. Photo above is not from today, but photo at left is, showing the Apple Blossom crowds.

Also, as we are in high dog-love mode right now, Sarah stopped to pet every dog we saw (even at a roadside rest stop, but certainly at the Apple Blossom Festival). A photo that doesn't show her face, left.

Near the Visitor's Center we saw a mother duck with eight very new ducklings, so there was that. We've always liked ducks, and who doesn't like ducklings? Mama Duck and little ones, in the final pic of the day.


More after dinner, if I have anything.

UPDATE: Dinner at Castiglia's down the street. Good, reasonably priced Italian. Tomorrow we hope to go to Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, where Sarah enjoys playing in the spring, eating ice cream, and other such diversions. We've done all this several times before, but it's got something for everybody and it's not that far from home.

.