Frontier Culture Museum picks up government shutdown slack with school field trip

I heard from a friend this morning whose wife teaches kindergarten at a local private school. The school had been scheduled to take a field trip today to Humpback Rocks farmstead on the Blue Ridge Parkway, a group of authentic log buildings forming an 1800s mountain farm. Due to the government shutdown, Humpback Rocks is closed and the field trip was in danger of falling through.

However, they were able to rearrange their field trip to Staunton's Frontier Culture Museum that teaches about the early immigrants who came to America from England, Ireland, Germany, and Africa complete with costumed interpreters and hands-on teaching opportunities.

A silver lining of this government shutdown may be that some tourism sites not under the federal government's umbrella could see an uptick in their visitors. The Frontier Culture Museum is just one....

Photo by Lynn R. Mitchell

Sunday: Teen victim of fatal BRP fall to be remembered at Lewis Ginter Gardens

Last week a 13-year-old girl from Richmond died in a fall over a cliff onto the Blue Ridge Parkway. The official report from the National Park Service follows:

Blue Ridge Parkway - Teenager Dies In Fall From Cliff

Blue Ridge Parkway dispatch center and Humpback Rocks visitor center received multiple reports of a young woman who had fallen approximately 50 feet down a cliff onto the parkway on Sunday evening, September 15th. There was a rapid response from park rangers and interpretive staff, Waynesboro and Wintergreen rescue squads, and medically trained visitors who witnessed the accident.

The patient, a 13-year-old girl, was flown by helicopter to University Medical Center in Charlottesville, but succumbed to her injuries. She had been picnicking with family and friends at Humpback Rocks picnic area and had hiked out to an overlook to view the sunset. She and another youngster had scrambled down from the overlook and were climbing along the top of the cliff when she fall. [Submitted by Kurt Speers, Ridge District Ranger]

The victim was identified as Alexandra Babeva. In a tribute, her sister Alissa wrote the obituary that appeared in the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

Oh, darling. Although we weep for the time you lost, we cannot mourn the time you lived. In 13 years, you learned enough to fill lifetimes. With those endless words of yours, you told the world into existence. Your love always lived beyond you, such a little being could not possibly hold the return. Now, we love for you. I live for you. Tbl CBET. Everywhere, the people you knew keep you as sweet, soft whispers. Reminding us to smile truly and look deeply; you will tell us how to see the smallest of the small and the biggest of the big. You flew, my baby, you never fell.

For anyone wishing to reflect Sasha's beauty through nature's divinity, our family invites you to enter the Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens at 11 a.m. Sunday, September 22, 2013. Written by Alexandra's sister, Alissa. Arrangements by Bliley's-Staples Mill.

H/T to Merlot