Ruby Tuesday - Street View

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Taken from upstairs at Cornerstone during the St. Pat's Fest on Saturday. See that Center In The Square building over to the right? I'll show you some views from the top tomorrow :)

Linking with Ruby Tuesday Too.

School is on a 1 hour delay today because of ice. The 1 hour delay is completely ridiculous. How will the roads improve in an hour?!

Monday Mural & Happy St. Patrick's Day!

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Some green graffiti I saw in a parking lot on our way home from the St. Patrick's Festival downtown. Linking with Monday Murals....

And here's a few shots of the festival:

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Sunny and warm Saturday at the festival and today we are having a snow day! We ended up with about 1-2 inches of snow this morning. Crazy weather!

Random 5 Friday - Triangle Building in Clifton Forge

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Across the street from Jack Mason's Tavern (yesterday's post) sits this cool old building. This building was owned at the turn of the century by the successful black businessman E.F. Scott. He sold produce and operated a restaurant from this location near the tracks, ran a hotel in the upper stories and a barber shop next door...found that tidbit of info HERE along with histories of other Clifton Forge buildings.

Now let's get random!

1) Finished reading This Rock the other night and this passage made me wonder:

"Lucky the row is turned so the graves face the east," Hank said.
"Why do graves face the east?" I said.
"So the dead will be facing Jesus when he busts through the eastern sky at the Rapture," Hank said. He heaved a big rock out of the hole.
A church faces west, and a grave faces east, I thought. The worshipers and the dead always face east.

I had never heard of this before so of course I had to Google it the next day and found THIS.

2) Dalton is taking a Tech Ed class and studying about engineering bridges. He told me about this video they watched about a bridge called Gallopin Gertie:


3) Saw a series of photos about an abandoned amusement park in Berlin. Immediately thought of Halcyon @ Berlin 365. You can see the set of photos HERE

4) Watched an incredible video of an injured dolphin that was rescued by a diver HERE.

5) Looking forward to the St. Patrick's Day Festival on Saturday. We haven't missed a year since we moved here. It is easily my favorite festival!

Have a great weekend and check out more randoms at Nancy's Rural Journal :)

Oh one more: This Dick's Sporting Goods commercial stopped my boys in their tracks tonight:


They really have a great advertising team don't they?!

Signs, Signs - Jack Mason's Tavern

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Whenever we are in Clifton Forge, we always eat at Jack Mason's Tavern. We love it! I always get the burger because once I find something I really like I stick with it. Nick has tried everything from the steak (which he compares to some of the best steak houses) to sandwiches. The boys always stick with their tried and true chicken nuggets, french fries and sweet tea.

From their website:
"Jack Mason’s Tavern is located in the small, quaint town of Clifton Forge, Virginia. We are a European-style pub, featuring a wide variety of beer, wine and spirits, designed to compliment the classic tavern fare on our menu.

We have designed Jack Mason’s Tavern not just as a restaurant, but also as a fun gathering place for friends and family of all ages. We have a game room featuring pool tables, video games and pinball, as well as 6 large TV’s and a state of the art sound system.

The large fireplace and warm atmosphere will welcome you as you come in to meet with friends or watch your favorite game. We are located directly across from the train station and welcome all of those passing through Clifton Forge, whether by road or rail, to come in and join us for a meal and a toast to Jack."

Click Here to read their menu and see more photos from the inside. See that first photo of the table in front of the map. We sat there last time and had fun finding places on the map. They also have a great selection of books, my favorites being historical photo books of the Clifton Forge area. I love browsing through them when we are waiting for our meal.

Linking with Signs, Signs

ABC Wednesday - I is for Identical

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Identical twins that is. Yeah, I'm not above pimping out my boys for the letter "I". I wanted this to be our last stop on the C&O Heritage Museum tour and couldn't find a way to "implement" (haha) these old carts and things that are outside of the freight depot I showed you yesterday.

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So that concludes our tour. Hope you enjoyed yourselves! Bye!

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Linking with ABC Wednesday

Ruby Tuesday - Freight Depot

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This is the old 1895 freight depot at the C&O Heritage Center. On the inside you will find all sorts of neat old things like:

(click on photo to enlarge) this operating model raiload that presents the key locations along the line, with descriptions of the reasons towns were built where they were and how they grew with the railroad. See that neat, huge grey building? That was the old Railroad YMCA. Sadly it was demolished. What a waste. You can read an interesting tidbit about the railroad and the YMCA HERE and I found these neat old pictures of vintage Clifton Forge postcards HERE

There's also cool old signs:

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Pretty ladies:

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And some knuckleheads ;)

Linking with Ruby Tuesday Too

C & O Rust

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A few of the old rusty trains at C&O Railways Heritage Center. Aren't they great?!

Yawn...so tired...as much as I love Daylight Savings, I dislike how dark it is when my alarm goes off...on top of that I didn't have my hot coffee ready to greet me this morning. Got it ready last night but forgot to add the water to it. Hate when I do that!