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| Crossroads in a Champagne District Village |
We realized that our box of champagne
was missing a bottle, so we drove a half hour back to the vineyard
through wonderful old villages precariously set on hillsides with the
vineyards spread out down the hillsides to the valley below. Every
village had champagne producers and places to s top for tastings, but
we passed them all by since we had to drive...
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| You guessed it - this is NOT a one-way street. Whoever is there first gets to go first! |
We picked up our missing bottle and
headed northeast towards the city of Reims. We stopped at a forest
preserve and did a nice 2 mile walk through the woods to see some
unusually formed trees with twisted trunks and branches that hang
like umbrellas – sort of France's answer to our live oak trees.
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| A baby "faux" tree |
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| Twisted trunks and umbrella like foliage |
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| We came across this small chapel (10x10) all by itself in the woods with a very pretty stained glass window in the back wall that you can see through the doorway |
We then made a quick stop at a tiny
museum in Reims where General Eisenhower had his headquarters and
where the Germans tried to negotiate an end to the war. The allies
would accept nothing but unconditional surrender and the papers were
signed in the map room around 2 in the morning.
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| Photo of Surrender |
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| The map room today, just as it was |
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| More of the map room |
It was getting late, so we opted to
stay at close-by Aire, right in downtown Reims. It took a while to
find the entrance to the small parking area behind a building that
held about 10 Rvs. The narrow entrance driveway had a sharp turn and
a low steel post jumped out and scraped down the side of the RV,
tearing off the handle of the slide-out bay near the door, cracking
the fiberglass in a few places along the rest of the bays and
damaging the steel supports for the locks on the bays.
We pulled in one of the remaining spots
and Jack got to work trying to fix the various damaged pieces. In
the process, he cut his finger quite badly and I found the number of
a taxi that could take us to the nearest clinic/hospital. We waited
a bit longer and the bleeding finally slowed, we were able to clean
it up, apply antibiotic cream and bandage it up. Although the cut
was deep, it wasn't a separating gash, but more of a flap on the pad
of his right index finger. It opened up a few more times, but
finally stopped bleeding, so we decided to hold off going to the
hospital.
Since Jack couldn't use his hand, he
instructed me on how to finalize the repairs he figured out so that
we could secure the bays and get flapping fiberglass tied down.
Afterwards, we sat in the adjoining grassy area, had a glass of wine
(OK, maybe a few glasses of well-deserved adult beverages), and had
dinner.
What started out as a serene, bucolic
day in the countryside ended with a some very stressful hours. It
stayed very warm during the night and without electricity, we tossed
and turned, reliving the day's aggravations, worried whether the
fixes will last, but grateful that Jack seems okay and we can
continue our trip.
