Monticello Revisited

Stan . . .

We made our way uneventfully from Texas to Ruston, Louisiana, then to Meridian, Mississippi, on northeasterly to Fort Payne, Alabama (hometown of the country music group Alabama), then up through the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia to Verona, Virginia making one night stops at each of those locations until we got to Verona and decided to take a break for several days.

We chose to stop in Verona so we could do a little sightseeing and enjoy the natural beauty of the area, with our first destination being Monticello, the home of our third president Thomas Jefferson.  We had visited Monticello 27 years earlier on a 2 week family vacation during the time that we lived in West Virginia.  We remembered how much we enjoyed Monticello during that trip and wanted to go back and revisit it again.

The first picture below is the view of the house as seen from the south lawn area (the outdoor area where the family would spend most of their outdoor time.  The main entrance to the house where visitors would arrive was on the north side.

Thomas Jefferson was deeply involved in agriculture (gardening in particular) and raised over 300 varieties of vegetables and fruits during his time at Monticello.  His vegetable garden at the height of his experimentation reached a size of 60 feet wide by 1000 feet long terraced around the hilltop on which Monticello was built.  The below picture shows a portion of his vegetable garden area.

On another terraced area located just below the vegetable garden was were Jefferson unsuccessfully attempted to raise various species of grapes in an attempt to create a vineyard for use in making wine.  He experienced better success with other species of fruits such as apples and peaches.  Below is a picture of his fruit orchard area.

After departing Monticello we took a drive up along Skyline Drive northward before returning to our campground in Verona.  Below are several pictures taken at various points along Skyline Drive.