Needless to say, hours of work at the State ARchives in Raleigh turned up little of interest or usefulness. Crushing really. But I've felt all along our answers were in TN while T has insisted on NC. Still, state archives are generally wonderful hushed places to spend a day and we felt quite special handling original old wills from the 17th and 18th centuries by others with our family name, and the folks there were helpful. Raleigh also seemed quite a sane town, with charm and culture built right in. Will have to return to Chat and Nashville someday soon to solve the riddle once and for all. And I shall, by cracky.

Today is the day, the last leg of our travels (for a month or so anyway) and I, for one, can't wait to get to that little piece of heaven known as the Jersey Shore. We've taken a friend's little shack until May, which should be just about the right time to head up to Maine again (although we will be making a quick trip back north in a week or so for T's car and to sort out a few things). By May we should have a handle on where we'd like to move to, T will have a job, I will have a contract for my book (you gotta love that kind of optimism at my age) and south of the Mason- Dixon is a likely destination for both of us then. I shall keep on blogging throughout it all so stay tuned if you like.

The weather is warm, sunny, and T will definitely be the one driving today as we cross the 20 mile, endless "vehicular toll crossing" known as the Chesapeake Bay bridge and I manage my vertigo. If you've never driven that bridge, allow me to warn you, it floats, pretty much all 20 miles of it, on pilings. I'm sure the engineers knew what they were doing when they designed it, but it gives me no end of agitta driving on the thing just the same.

Will post a few pics above (as soon as I can manage to get my BB to talk to my email) from the drive up from Charleston yesterday. It was hard to part with T2. This morning we're in historic Suffolk,VA presently at a Holiday Inn Express where the pillows are decent, the beds comfy and I finally got a good night's sleep after watching "Goodbye, Mr. Chips", a film I've always wanted to see and it didn't disappoint. I slept in a meat coma induced by the ribeye I wolfed down at the Grey Fox in Franklin, VA. Hadn't had a real meal since the Crescent City Etouffee pig out; hunger is not good for sound sleep. The ribeye at the Grey Fox is edible --though the "chef" insisted the beans did not come from a can -- and the waitress was an earnest little thing who, nonetheless, had to read the two dinner specials from her printed list -- definitely not spelling bee material, that girl. I was hungry and grateful for the steak, such as it was, accompanied by an ok salad with cukes that must have run screaming from the veggie peeler, they had such a tough hide. But decently grilled was all I required. Like they say: it ain't love but it ain't bad.

Alrightythen! Let's go see what "hot breakfast" means to the good folks of Suffolk, Virginia.