Yorktown, & Jamestown

With a few brief weeks between the end of Aaron's first year of law school and his summer internship, we decided to take advantage of the time by going 2.5 hours south to the old historic districts of Williamsburg, Yorktown, and Jamestown. We were very grateful to have Aaron's mom and his sister Chelsea join us, to help with Christopher and to enjoy the little adventure.

We stayed at a very nice, rather large timeshare near Williamsburg, and when we weren't walking miles and miles through museums and recreated settlements, we were thoroughly enjoying the giant jacuzzi bath. (Our bathroom proved big enough and dark enough for us to turn into Christopher's bedroom after he woke the first morning wayyyy too early because of the light coming through the windows.)

Although Monday proved far too rainy and cold to enjoy anything outside, we did visit the Ripley's Believe It or Not museum, and Christopher danced around on the giant floor piano like the one seen in the Tom Hanks movie, "Big." He did a lot more running around on Tuesday when we took advantage of the perfect weather by visiting Jamestown and Yorktown. We had to relearned our American history and the classic Thanksgiving story all over again. Topher felt a skunk felt and played with blocks that demonstration how the Englishmen built their homes without nails. We roamed through a recreated Indian village and when we found Fort James, Topher climbed out of his stroller and immediately went running after a loose chicken. The chicken became our tour guide as it wandered from the building to building trying to flee our enthusiastic kid. Topher also seemed fascinated by the mud and dirt, drawing pictures on the ground in the dirt outside of the old church and preacher's home. We found a bowling set in the corner of the Fort made of wooden pegs and a canon ball, and that kept Christopher entertained long enough for the rest of use to visit all of the other buildings. Aaron took him up on one of the recreated ships sitting at the docks, fully stocked in the manner it would have been when the first colonists arrived. The idea of traveling across the seas, across the world essentially, in a cramp vessel like those hulls made me realize what courage really meant. It was either courage or sheer desperation.

At Yorktown we learned about everything that led up the Revolutionary War and what transpired during its last battle. We stood on the actual battle grounds and then visited a recreation of a Patriots camp, learning how the tent city was set up. Much to my chagrin, we were told that any women and children who joined their husbands at war had to live in shelters made of pine boughs at the back of the camp. We also learned about the medical practices that were common during the War, handling and hypothesizing about the use of particular surgical instruments. We hardly had time to tour the colonial village, but that was fine because we'd had our historical fill for the day.