Friday/Saturday

The start of our 3rd and final week in USA this year. Lucy was off work so we all took a day trip back down to the historic old town of Jacksonville - the first place in the US to be nominated as a historic site of national importance. It's a lovely old town and home of the annual Britt music festival - we had seen Suzanne Vega here a couple of years ago in the lovely outdoor amphitheatre, but our visit this year did not coincide with any artists we were particularly interested in - we had just missed the Four Tops and the Temptations who appeared when we were in Nevada.

We had lunch at the Jacksonville Inn again - and it was lovely. We then took the trolley tour round the town and saw where Dubya stayed on his last election campaign - the Inn is full of photos of famous people who have stayed there or in the separate "honeymoon" cottages where the Bushes were ensconsed.

On Saturday it was another day trip - this time back to Ashland, home of the year round Shakespeare theatre. There was a small market which we browsed before the inevitable lunch back at the Standing Stones brewpub - see above.

We then made the short trip over to Emigrant Lake. We had last been there a few years ago when Kelly was with us. Scott bought unlimited passes for the water slides from 2 pm to 5 pm, but we couldn't believe it when our time had expired - none of us had got anywhere near using our passes to the full.

Of course, Jo just sits out any form of activity and we found a shady spot under a tree where she could read more of her Harry Potter. Lucy brought back a little treat for her - Dibs are little chocolate covered cubes of ice cream - very more-ish.