Virginia road trip

Last September Dave and I took a road trip around Virginia. I usually pick where we go on vacation because Dave never really expresses an opinion on where he wants to go. This time, Dave wanted to go to Colonial Williamsburg, so we made a trip around that. Here are some highlights...

First we drove along the George Washington Memorial Parkway. You can see DC as you drive along the Potomac. We stopped at a park for a walk, but the weather was bad so that was cut short. The weather was rainy a lot during this trip. I got some national park passport stamps, and then we headed to the first big stop, Mount Vernon.

GW's house

You can see how rainy it was in the photo of George Washington's house. We toured the house, walked the grounds, saw his grave, and checked out the museum. It was neat.

Washington's grave

I'm a big fan of George Washington, so I really enjoyed seeing his home. Next stop, Colonial Williamsburg. It was okay. Here's the problem...It wasn't crowded. Usually that is fantastic, because we hate crowds. But when you walk into all the little shops, the reenactors want to talk to you and tell you about what they do. So how do you leave when there isn't a crowd and you can't sneak out??? We ended up just going in a couple of places. I did see an original Gutenburg printing press, so that was cool. My dad is a retired printer, and I had a tiny model of one when I was a kid. The highlight here was the Thomas Jefferson reenactor. He was great.

Jefferson reenactor giving a speech

Next stop, Yorktown! Yorktown, Jamestown, and Colonial Williamsburg are all within 20 minutes of each other. I very much enjoyed Yorktown.

me and my buddy, George

Yorktown is where Cornwallis surrendered to Washington, effectively ending the American Revolution. We checked out the museum and then walked down to the water. I was trying to picture all the ships there. We saw some great blue herons down there, which made me happy.

After Yorktown was Jamestown, the first permanent British settlement in the Americas. We went there because it was close, but it was meh. Nice to see, but I wouldn't really recommend it. Oh, and needless to say, there were passport stamps at Yorktown and Jamestown. Yes!

Here's where the trip changed direction. Originally, we were going to go from here to visit my cousin who lives in South Carolina. However, a major hurricane had just hit there, and that part of the trip was cancelled. In fact, as we were driving along 95 in Virginia, there were repeated signs saying that 95 was closed in North Carolina and to find an alternate route. Crazy.

Instead, we headed west. The first new stop was Appomattox Court House, where Lee surrended to Grant, ending the Civil War. Another passport stamp! Woo!

surrender time

From there we went to the mountains. First we drove along some of the Blue Ridge Parkway. It was beautiful.

I love the layered look of the mountains. Then we drove through Shenandoah National Park along Skyline Drive. The weather was pretty bad at this point, so it was mostly hard to see the mountains there. But I did get more passport stamps...We were going to stay the night in a town just north of Skyline Drive, and as we were exiting the highway, we saw a national park sign. What? A bonus park? Yes!

Cedar Creek and Belle Grove was a civil war battle site. It's a new park and there wasn't much to it, but they did have the coolest thing in the visitor center- a fiber optic reenactment of the battle.

The story of the battle was told on the screen, and the lights on the table lit up to show the movements of the two armies. It really helped give a sense of what was going on. That was the last new stop of the road trip. The next day we got back on track and headed to Chincoteague and Assateague to see the wild ponies. This is split between two states, and you don't see many ponies in Chincoteague, the Virginia side. They're all fenced in far away. But the wildlife refuge was full of birds!

great egret fishing

I caught a photo of this one fishing. There were egrets and herons all over the place. We drove up to Maryland to see their ponies, and they were everywhere! It was raining and windy. We couldn't even walk on the beach. But the ponies were all over the park.

You can see they're all wet from the rain.

You have to be careful driving around because the ponies walk in the street. They didn't care that we were there. This is what I thought of when I pictured this place. Virginia's ponies were a disappointment, but this made up for that. That was the last stop on the road trip. Dave and I loved Chincoteague/Assateague, and we'll definitely go back sometime.