What a find. I'm staying at Afton Mountain Bed and Breakfast, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The room I'm staying in is called the Mornington room because it was the bedroom of Cloudiless Mornington Goodwin, who was 9 years old when his family bought this house in 1878. The house was built in 1848 and has been beautifully restored.
I booked this room out of necessity. Tomorrow is graduation at the University of Virginia, and by the time I realized I'd need a room--several months ago, actually--everything in Charlottesville was booked. Afton is about 20 miles from Charlottesville and I was disappointed at having to stay so far from campus, but I'm glad now that I found this place. The drive here was absolutely beautiful. This is Virginia wine country (yes, Virginia has more than 400 wineries) and Veritas Vineyards is about a mile up the road. I think I must visit Veritas Vineyards before I leave.
This old house has a back porch, and the owner (the husband) took me out there on a short tour. I wanted to sit in one of the chairs and stay there forever. The porch looks out over a large lawn with huge trees, a quintessential Virginia landscape. You can smell the green; it's a dense smell, a verdant aroma of mown grass. The hills are rolling here--low mountains are in the near distance, covered with dense forest, green as far as the eye can see.
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