Mark and I headed up to St. Francisville with Janet and Mike today to look at all the historical homes and have a nice lunch. It rained most of the day so we had to confine ourselves mostly to just driving by them. Wow, that's a beautiful town. I didn't take these pictures since it was pouring down rain - I found them on an online photo site - but they're of houses and things that we saw today:
Seabrook
Rosebank
Virginia
Oakley House
Then, since we couldn't get out and stroll around the homes and gardens because of the rain, we decided to head up to Angola. I know, I know . . . it does seem odd that we would decide to leave all those beautiful historic homes and go visit a prison, but hey ... it turned out to be quite interesting, actually. There's a museum just outside the gate. One of the most interesting things in the museum was a horse-drawn hearse built by inmates in 1998 and used ever since for the funerals of inmates. It's in the museum, but with double doors that allow it to be removed for use when needed. The wall next to it is a giant photograph of the hearse in use, pulled by two gorgeous white draft horses.
Here are photos of the hearse itself:
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A less lovely example of inmate manufacturing talent was the HUGE collection of confiscated weapons. Phew! Can't imagine agreeing to be a guard at that place after seeing all that stuff!
Really scary.
But here's the REALLY strange part of the evening...
Once we got home, Mark headed over to feed the horses and I fed the dogs some new "sensitive stomach" dog food that I'm HOPING will replace the prescription stuff. A while later I heard the car pull up and I knew Mark was back from the barn. A minute later he stuck his head in the door and yelled for me to come down to the front porch "right now!" Scared me to death. I ran downstairs to see what was wrong and as I ran out the front door, there stood Gracie! Gave me chills. There she stood on the front steps exactly like she had years back when she first showed up here. I can't tell you how strange that felt. I sat down and she came right over and let me pet her and fuss over her. But then we heard someone down the road shouting. We couldn't really hear what he was saying but we thought it had to be her owner looking for her so I put a leash on her and headed down there. Sure enough, she belongs to the people who live across the street and down one property. I'm glad we were able to get her back to them, since that road in front would have been dangerous if she were running around loose, but giving her back really made me feel empty. For a couple of minutes there it felt like Gracie had been reincarnated.
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