Taking A Walk

by Dwayne Phillips

Today we walked from the southern end of Harrisonburg through the town of Mt Crawford and then Burketown. This was another cool day that started at 50 degrees F and ended at 70. It was also a short day as we stopped walking at noon after nine miles and then drove back to our home in Reston for the weekend.

Mt Crawford surprised me. For one thing it is spelled “Mount Crawford” on the Wikipedia page. On the map, it is only a wide spot in the road, but it is a real town. Here is a picture of some of the houses on Main Street or U.S. Route 11. This is what is meant by a “Main Street” town in Virginia. The houses are sometimes inches off the highway.

The treat of the day was watching 10 or 11 year old kids playing flag football at the park in Mt Crawford. I like this as I played flag football at that age. It has much benefit over “tackle” football with all the expensive equipment and advantage of larger kids over smaller ones.

Here is a photo of the most picturesque church building in Mt Crawford. If you look closely, you will see that the name on the sign out front doesn’t match the name in the stained glass over the front door. That is often the case in these towns.

And yes, as promised, when we reached the southern end of Rockingham County on highway 11, there was the other turkey statue. I read the plaques on this statue (I didn’t notice them on the northern one). The statues were put in place in 1955 and then restored in 1995. I like that; I like the idea of restoring statues and having pride in the local products.

Burketown was literally a wide spot in the road. There was one house that had a sign out front “Burketown Inn 1865,” but I didn’t see any signs of life.

No walking on Sunday. Probably no walking on Monday as I visit the dentist. Oh boy, cannot wait.

I added the photos on Sunday the 21st.