Got Winchester?
The latest addition comes from BurgundyKat. She actually took at side stop to a town called Winchester, Idaho. Here’s what she had to say about her journey:
This past weekend, my family had the misfortune to have to attend the funeral of a family member in Pullman, Washington. On the way back from that sad event, I coerced my husband and and in-laws into making a very quick side stop in the remote town of Winchester, Idaho.
Winchester, Idaho, is the complete opposite of a metropolis, with a total of 308 residents (according to the town sign). What they lack in size, they make up for in location: a few miles southeast of Lewiston and northwest of Cottonwood just off U.S. 95, at the base of the Craig Mountains, part of the Rocky Mountain Range. They have the added bonus of being adjacent to the, get this, Winchester Lake State Park. http://www.stateparks.com/winchester.html
Winchester and Winchester Lake State Park are easy to get to, but cannot be seen from, U.S. 95. It’s absolutely beautiful, remote, quiet, fabulous, and of course named after our favorite family. Okay, maybe not that last part, but it does share the same name as our favorite family.
Winchester has its very own Winchester Road, Winchester Fire Department, Winchester Post Office, obviously its own State Park, and according to a sign (that I unfortunately failed to get a photo of though I tried) is home to the “World Famous Winchester Rodeo” http://www.cowboy.com/index.php?nav=listing&id=15728 (though it appears that the rodeo hasn’t been active since 2007 – drat).
Hey Alice, no rush you know. We do still have months to “kill” as it were. Thanks to you for posting.
While I too don’t really envision either of the Winchester boys doing the grape thing, the gallery seems very Sam in some ways. He could have called up Sarah from NY, decided to settle down…
And Dean, well there are also a ton microbreweries and I could see Dean doing that.
I’m looking forward to seeing what other folks come up with.
Too far from hometown to take a pic… but here’s one I found amusing (though it’s the website, rather than a pic)
http://winchesterblasting.com/
It’s a explosive/demolition company. I’m thinking this might be right up thier alley :}
In the last town I lived in, there was a Mr. Dean’s Cafe, and right across the street was Sam’s Mobile! Dean’s cafe closed down not long after I discovered it, and I have no idea what happened to Sam’s phone store. Sorry I don’t have pics though..
Btw Alice, the past couple of times I tried to post comments on this site, the comments simply disappeared :-?: On a side note, I just want to say I became addicted to this site within a day or two of my first vist, and am now a regular stalker 😀 I love this site, keep up the good work!
Ha! I never thought about the Sam/Dean aspect. There’s a Sam’s Deli a block away from my office. GRIN.
As for Narcissus’s comment about posting to this site – I find that the word verification doesn’t always work the first time. Usually I have to scroll down and do it again, but I don’t loose my post. It’s like it times out or something cause it usually happens on my longer posts where I have to stop and think things through while I’m writing.
There is a Winchester Hotel close to a friends work and that amused me – after all their motel experiences they’d probably be quite knowledgeable about the hotel industry.
Winchester is a town in England http://www.visitwinchester.co.uk/ an old historic town so more down Sam’s alley than Dean’s
No visual proof to back this up whatsoever but I think Sam would have a secondhand bookshop full of encyclopedias of weirdness and Dean would have a custom shop full of tarted up old motors and sweaty, well-developed blokes in oily t-shirts and … Sorry, drifted off for a mo there, what were we talking about? 😆
That was precious! Now I will have my eyes open!!!
There is the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose CA. Built by Sara Winchester, the rifle heir. Very strange place.
I love teasing my hubby about the fact that I am riding around on “Dean” tires (made by Cooper tire here in the US).
yes i i got winchester so bad that my husband gets so mad at me i teas hem how i wood throw hem out of bad for dean Anne time. ;-)will i no it is just a fantasee and in reil life he is just a good aether and so is sam so keep it up boys love ya your best fan Joni. 💡 😎 😎
There is a fairly large town in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, north of where I live. I will be driving past tomorrow, I will try to snap a shot of the interstate sign!
There is a Municipality in Manitoba Canada called Winchester The community profile website (http://www.communityprofiles.mb.ca/cgi-bin/csd/index.cgi?id=4605037) states that the wildlife “attracts hunters from as far away as the southern states.”
This seems like the right place to wish everyone a Happy St. Swithun’s Day!
Why? He was the Bishop of Winchester.
According to lore, on his deathbed, he asked to be buried outside Winchester Cathedral where people could walk over his grave and he could ‘feel the rain.’ Church elders granted his request. Nine years later, however, then felt a place inside the church crypt was a more appropriate burial site, and had him moved. St. Swithun was apparently unhappy with the move and Winchester experienced torrential rains for the next 40 days until they moved him back outside.
The old wives tale that developed is that if it rains on St. Swithun’s Day (July 15), 40 more days of rain will follow. If the weather’s clear, there’s good weather ahead for the next 40 days.
Just goes to show – don’t cross a Winchester boy of any ilk! 😆
Well Winchester’s a city in England so there’s lots of Winchester roads and walks etc esp in London.
So happy when i saw the Winchester Hotel made my friend stop so that i could take a photo of it – she thought i was mad. Anyway i just loved the idea of the boys running a hotel, they’re been to enough. I wonder if it has magic fingers?
According to the Oxford Dictionary of English Place-names, the name “Winchester” is an old English name (dating from about 730AD) describing the place as a Roman town (“chester”)called Venta (which is itself a pre-Celtic word possibly meaning “favoured or chief place”). Roman in England means established between the 1st and 4th century AD, so the town is likely to be at least 1,600 years old.
Someone with the surname Winchester would probably have had an ancestor who moved away from the town in the 13th or 14th century AD. That was about the time surnames were coming into common use in England, and most surnames were based on place, occupation (eg Smith) or descriptions (eg Brown), probably using whichever was the most obvious identifier for the first person in the family to be given the surname. (It’s a moot point whether everyone got to choose their own name: some surnames were distinctly unflattering (language shifts over time have changed which ones.)
The point about the family having moved away from Winchester is that you don’t give a place name to someone who lives in that place, because otherwise the point of having identifying surnames is lost – everyone in the town would have the same name. So probably the head of the household being named had recently come from Winchester to some other place, and it was the most obvious/desirable characteristic to name themselves by.
Don’t know if I can get a picture or not, but I thought of them retiring at the Winchester Mansion. The house is part of the Winchester rifle fortune (about 20M), …..and it is very HAUNTED! I could see them finding out they are heirs to that fortune and ending up living there. After all a few ghosts won’t bother them. 😆 We have never been given the Winchester family tree. Always thought it would be neat if they could do an episode there.
There is a Winchester, Texas and Deanville, Texas. There is also a Beaver, Washington. I also work across from Jensens Flooring