PRESIDENT #2 AND #3

We continue on our not-a-very-good-start track here.

President #2 was John Adams and I haven’t been to Adam’s house.

President #3 was Thomas Jefferson who lived in Monticello.

We went to Monticello on our last just-the-four-of-us vacation.  Both kids came home from their summer jobs and we headed East. This was back before my good before-digital  35mm camera and most of the pictures on this trip I KNOW for sure were taken with our video camera – I know because the video were taken by Jeff in Jeff’s own unique style.Monticello is one of the most well-known Presidential homes, not only because it is considered an architectual masterpiece, but also because it is full of Jefferson’s inventions.  Monticello is on a mountaintop in Albermarle County, Virginia.

You walk into a dome-shaped entrance hall that’s actually a mini-museum planned by Jefferson himself. The hall has bones and a buffalo head and a 7-day clock which keeps track of the days and the hours.  He also built revolving service doors between the kitchen and dining room so the servants wouldn’t have to see the guests and had fourteen skylights built into the roof.

Other inventions include a revolving book stand where Jefferson could have five books open at once to help while he was doing research, a copying machine,  a concave mirror so he could see hidden corners and a solar microscope.

The grounds of Monticello are also magnificent. The plantation stretches for 5000 acres and includes gardens with 170 varieties of fruit and 333 varities of vegetables. The property also has many different varieties of trees.

Perhaps Jefferson himself summed it up the best when in n 1809 he wrote to  friend …

Within a few days I shall bury myself in the groves of Monticello and become a mere spectator to passing events.

Easy to see how he could do that.