A Trip Down Memory Lane

Since we moved to this area I have been wanting to visit the town where I lived in middle school, before my Dad retired and we moved to Florida. Jefferson, Maryland is northwest of here, but hard to get to, we discovered, because of traffic. We made it though, and it was so fun to see the house where we lived and the rolling farmland surrounding it, not to mention the little main street of Jefferson, virtually unchanged in the 18 or so years since we left. I was a little nervous about going because I have this mental picture of how beautiful it was and I didn't want to see change and developments and cleared land and shopping centers. I was overjoyed to see it virtually the same, with a few minor changes. The area is just beautiful still, with green rolling pastures, farms here and there, and old stone houses surrounded by trees. My Dad chose this area to avoid the congested area in Northern Virginia where he worked, and I 'm so glad he did. It was and is really idyllic. My Dad has some better pictures on his camera which I forgot to upload...Whoopsies.

Here is the corrugated metal pipe tunnel up the road from our neighborhood. There used to be a sheep farm nearby where we would go look at the baby lambs in the spring. The farm buildings and some of the pasture is still intact, but we didn't see any sheep.

Our house! It is amazing how much the trees have grown in 18 years- we used to be able to see the whole house and we had problems with the winds that would blow so strongly on the unprotected hill. Now you can hardly see the house! To the left of the house you can see the Christmas trees we planted each year! We had burgundy shutters on the house- now all the gray is too bland, if you ask me.

Main street, Jefferson. So quaint and old world. One traffic light. We stopped to eat at the one restaurant, a pizza place. There were two old men sitting there who talked to the children and told us how they have lived in Jefferson their whole lives. They left but soon after I walked Mac next door to a Tractor/Hardware store to kill time while we waited for the pizza, and there were the two old men sitting in the Tractor Store.

We found our way up Mar-Lu Ridge, where my Mom and Dad had gone on Emmaus retreats and my brother and his friend used to go mountain biking. What a view- that is the Potomac River curving around a bend. The gap in the mountains in the distance is Harpers Ferry, WV, where John Brown did his thing and got hanged. It is also where the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers converge.

The cross on Mar-Lu Ridge. Behind it is a chapel all made of windows. It is a wonderful place to worship. (It is a Lutheran retreat center, basically; hence Mar-Lu for Lutheran.)


From here we drove in to Frederick, the larger town where I went to school and took ballet. I took the rest of the pictures with Dad's camera so I have no pictures, but it was so neat to "drive to school" just like we used to- I even remembered the short cut. After all the sight-seeing the drive home was terrible- even though we were heading toward DC- I guess it doesn't really matter at rush hour. I'm glad we did it though- it brought back so many good memories of happy childhood times.