Archive for the ‘Williamsburg’ Category
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1
Jun
2006
It’s History
Last day in Williamsburg. Ah, a mixture of melancholy. More to do, but time to go.
Although I had dreams of making an early start today, I was wiped last night. I notied glancing over my BLOG from last night that I made some really bad typos. I mean, there are typos, and then there are “I’m half asleep and this won’t make sense later” typos… I see the latter…. Joy, I’ll have to fix that later. So, that’s why it was not an early start. Not in the cards when I’m nodding off at the keyboard before going to bed.
But, I got up and out to Yorktown. Again, I drove myself. I didn’t want to wait for a bus and lose more time. Like Jamestowne, Yorktown is two different attractions, administered by two seperate groups. One is the actual site of the battle, which is handled by the National Park Service. The other is a dramatic re-enactment down the road from the actual site. I had a feeling I wouldn’t make both given my late start, so I made my choice for the legitimate article. I can’t say I made the right choice or the wrong one, but I don’t regret it.
Now, there’s a lot of imagination required at the original site. We are talking about a battle from 1781 after all. Yorktown was the site of the last major battle of the American Revolution. The victory there by the American and French decided the outcome of the war, although it would be two more years before an official treaty was signed. I managed to walk in perfectly in time for a ranger led walking tour. She showed some of the artilery used in the battle and where and how the earthworks were made by both sides. And she explained how this really was a battle that was decided by firepower more than anything. The Americans and French boxed Cornwallis and his forces in and then pummelled his earthworks with artilery until he surrendered.
To those who actually read this, it probably feels like I always find a family member to mention, but there’s a reason I’m going where I’m going, you know? My great, great, great grandfather, William Johnston, was said to have been at this battle and to have been there for the surrender. Honestly, that’s probably the only reason I didn’t spend another day in Williamsburg. Honestly, if you’ve seen one pile of grassy earth works from the Civil War or Revolution, it feels to me as if you’ve seen them all. There’s some really cool information to be had there, but you could get the same from, GASP, a book! Still, it was the first in-depth information I’d gotten on the battle and it was interesting to me in the context that a scant few generations back was there. In fact, I could swear I’d read somewhere that at the time of the Revolution he lived in York County. He was a Virginian at any rate, wherever he might have called home while he fought in the Revolution as a young man.
Oh, funny thing for the day. The park service offers an audio you can purchase to listen to as you drive around the site…. Okay… It was only $4.95 for the CD, so I got it, popped it in the changer and started out…. uhmm… It was recorded for someone with a “tape recorder” and a portable one at that… I kept waiting for the beep to advance the film to the next slide (if you don’t remember those, I don’t want to hear it!). So, it was a scary old audio guide…. That would have been enough… But, they also expect you to be using a portable player to listen to it… It’s in the changer in my trunk…. So, everytime I got somewhere, I had to listen to the commentary, then get out and go try to figure out what it was talking about. By the time I finally reached Surrender Field, I realized that I wasn’t even at the right part of the guide anymore, so I listened to the past two stops and surrender field before getting out. Yes, it was that confusing. And yes, I finally understood why I hadn’t seen anything described at the past stops…. So, the moral is if you visit the national park, ask about the audio guide and if you need a portable player for it. If you go to Yorktown, you can have my audio guide with that caveat…
Back in Williamsburg, I ventured over to the old Gaol (jail in modern day). Was very interesting, especially since it’s the same vintage as the capitol (well, the capitol is a re-creation, but Gaol is original). So, early 1700’s jail that survived and was still used by the city into the early 1900’s! Yoiks! I meandered through quite a few buildings and then finally made my way down to the College of William and Mary. I wanted to see the Wren building, as it’s called. The original main building of the campus is supposedly designed by Sir Christoper Wren of London fame (think St. Paul’s Cathedral for example). Now, there’s some question as to the truh of this. Still, very old college building. I never made it down to tour the inside, but it’s a beautiful building, so I followed the outside of it taking shots here and there.
After that, I watched “General Washington” talk to the townsfolk about how the war is faring. And then watched a fife and drum corp march down the main street. Those are the moments where the old music is going and you almost feel transported back. For a moment, the out of place clothing of all the tourists is gone and you’re just there.
The last stop on the agenda was a re-enactment of the debate of whether or not Virginia would support the Revolution or not. We got to hear from multiple townsfolk and why they were supporting the Patriots or the King. And then we were all given little slips of paper with the name of a person who reprsented their county at that meeting and whether they were Patrio, Loyalist, or Moderate. I was a moderate from Amelia County. The funny part? Guess where William Johnston was born? Yep… Surprise, we voted for independence, altough it was like 30-something to ten. The original vote was near unanimous.
That done, I walked around and took my last shots of Williamsburg before I ran out of space on my memory cards. And back here for dinner. Yum McD’s… where they seem to think a ketchup only burger means mustard only… garrggggghhhh….
Oh well, first real fast food in days and the only meal I had today other than breakfast… Still, I digress. The trip was great fun. In a matter of a few days up here, I got to see the beginning of the English colonization at Jametowne, the middle of that time when the first sparks of the Revolution played out here in Williamsburg, and the concluding moments at Yorktown. And the mark of any good trip, in my eyes, is when there was such a wealth of things to see that there are things I didn’t see but hope to some day. Would I come back next week? No, but between the 400 year anniversary next year and the consant research and changes at these sights, the landscape will be different down the road and worth another visit, I’m sure.
Tomorrow I leave Williamsburg, and I’ve decided it’s a one way long trek back to Georgia. I had thought I’d stay on the way back somewhere, but I could never come up with somewhere I just wanted to stay the night. So, I plan to actually make a real early start of it and get my butt home. I do plan to stop at Flowerdew Hundred and see the land my 10 greats grandparents called home. It’s not like there’s a house there or anything, but there is a museum, etc. So, it could be cool. It’s not per se on the way, but it’s not out of the way. It just means that like I did on my way in, there will be a round-about journey back to the interstate. Here’s hoping it’s at least scenic!
Now to bed, and then the next stop, my own bed sometime tomorrow night!
30
May
2006
Williamsburg, Colonial Capital
Exhaustion has definitely set in, but it’s a happy exhaustion.
I woke up ahead of my alarm this morning so got an early start. I was in Williamsburg before everything opened, so the beginning of the day was peaceful, before the masses descended.
I had a 10am tour that, as luck had it, was lightly attended. The guide and I got to talk a half hour while we waited to see if ANYONE else at all would arrive. Turns out he had been visiting family in Buford, Georgia just yesterday and had driven all the way back yesterday… My sympathy… When the tour started, it was just me. But about 5 minutes in, a trio of ladies from New Jersey, who were just a tad my Mom’s senior showed up. They said they had come to Williamsburg on their Senior trip and had continued to come back together over the years. The group was so small they had passed me and the guide looking for the group earlier.
It was a shame more people didn’t show, but we had a great tour of the artifacts that have been uncovered during excavations at Williamsburg. We also got a lot of the history of those excavations and how they’ve changed over the years. Now, the practice is to dig in parallel pits leaving much of the site undisturbed in case future archeaolgists have more sophisticated methods so that they can uncover more of the past with less destruction that we do now. The minutia of their jobs is astounding. From pottery shards to the silica contained in plant cells, they catalog everything they find at a site. Being a private, non-profit deal, the digging ebbs and flows, but if what we saw is a sample, as they said it was, then there’s a wealth of history in that warehouse.
That tour ended, I decided it was time to take lunch. If I thought Biltmore was bad… Lunch was $20… Granted, $10 of that was for a plastic tanyard that I can get refilled for free as long as I’m here… The dark side of this is that I’m at yet another Pepsi only location. Still, I more than got my money’s worth of Pepsi products just today. I’m sure they make out like a bandit off some people, but there are those of us getting our money’s worth of liquid refreshments… I had a grilled chicken sandwich in one of the taverns. I would have also had the bread pudding had I any cash left… Maybe tomorrow or Thursday. My grandmother made a dish that she called the same and it looked like hers. Actually, she made it for me exactly one time. She was in a memory lane mood and she loved to bake, so she made it for me because she remembered her mother and grandmother making it. So, it appears to be an old dish. Thanks to my Uncle, I have her recipe, but I’ve never had the heart (yet) to try making it.
I also had an afternoon tour, which was called “Bits and Bridles” – a horse teamed tour which the lady at the ticket office yesterday recommended. It was actually quite good and went beyond horses into the animal sciences group at Williamsburg, who are working on saving a number of “rare breeds.” Not limited to just colonial animals, mind you, they also are working to preserve animals such as plow horses who have been on the decline since the mechanization of farms in the 1930’s. I now know more about horse shoes than I ever thought I would. I wouldn’t count on me remembering a lot of it in a few days…
In amongst all this, I visited some of the colonial buildings. One guide today said that 80% of the buildings are recreations. The part I want to know is more about which ones aren’t. While the recreations are fantastic, I want to get a chance to see the ones that are authentic. I visited the storehouse where the gunpowder that sparked the revolution was stored. That is, authentic. I also visited the parish church, which is authentic to 1715. It’s really something to sit on pews that Jefferson, Washington, etc. had sat on. And the baptismal font in the church was moved there from Jamestown, so there’s a chance my Woodson ancestors had been in contact with it.
Even though it was a recreation, I visited the Governor’s palace, which is really amazing. It’s life began as a place for the royal governor. It later was home of the first two Governor’s of Virginia (Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson), but it’s life ended as a make-shift hospital in a fire in 1781, after the removal of the capitol to Richmond. There are a lot of authentic to the era pieces inside and the items that aren’t were often made by companies still in existence today that made furnishings for the Governor’s palace in the 18th century. As the tour completed, we had just a few minutes to tour the gardens before closing, so I will have to go back again. Really beautiful.
After all this, I broke for awhile and came back here for dinner and a little rest for the feet. I had a ghost tour at 8:30pm, so it was nice for some down time. I didn’t walk back from here. I had a few groceries to pick up. The neat part of my hotel room (and there aren’t many) is the fridge and microwave so that I don’t have to eat take-out constantly. So, provisions taken care of, I decided to drive to the Welcome center and try that approach. I had yet to walk from that direction. It was at least as long a walk as from the hotel. Maybe longer… But nice as there were buildings I had not yet seen in that direction. However, I’m glad there are buses running back because after the ghost stories, I wouldn’t have relished the dark walk back on that winding, woodsy path…
The ghost stories were just great. They were all period stories, which regardless of truth, were stories that were told in the day when Colonial Williamsburg was one of, if not the most, important cities in Colonial America (can you tell I’ve been feed propoganda all day?). Each were told inside authentic Colonial homes by candle light! Wheee! One had some familiar family names but I’ll have to check my notes at home to see if there’s a connection or not. Not uncommon names, so it could be merely a coincidence, but I’ll cross check it eventually.
I’m spent, but tomorrow is another day. I plan (hopefully) to get an early start so that I can drive over to the welcome center and hop the bus to Jamestown. There are two attractions there, one is the actual site of Jamestown where the first settlement was back in 1607. My Ancestors, Dr. John Woodson and wife, Sarah, landed there some years later in 1619, but that’s the draw for me outside of the history of the place itself. The other attraction is a recreation, somewhat like Williamsburg, of life in the original settlement. Unlike Williamsburg, the recreation isn’t on the actual site. I like that in some ways since when you visit the original site of Jamestown, what you see left is genuine, and you can watch the archaeolgists dig. When you visit the other site, you know it’s entirely a recreation. Not a bad thing, mind you.
Random fact learned today. In colonial times, the maximum distance a person could travel in a day was 70 miles. The max, mind you, was less than most of us drive on a wide open interstate highway in an hour… Remember, this is before rail travel. People traveled by boat or horse.
29
May
2006
Asheville to Williamsburg
Oh dear, that’s a long drive. Don’t let anyone kid you, it’s a really long drive.
The beginning was interesting. I-40 coming out of Asheville is a lot more winding and downhill than I’m used to. You know the road is mountainous when there are signs instructing trucks that they can use the shoulder to cool their brakes. They also had a 35mph limit on them. And the absolute best was the ramps for out of control trucks…. uhm… I saw enough of those to make me think that they must be for a reason… They amounted to a lot of small dirt hills leading to a large one… One would assume the small bumps were to slow the truck and the last big one was the final stop… brrr….
And here’s a random observation, you know you’re not in Georgia anymore when all the rest stops have ONLY Pepsi products. I stopped at two stops in North Carolina and one in Virginia…. nothing but Pepsi… bleh… Oh well, when you’re desperate, you’re getting what they sell… well, at two of three stops anyway…
I’m going to have to examine the maps a bit before I leave, especially once I settle on where I’m stopping over on my way back. I followed the AAA map that I got before leaving and once I got off I-95, I figured I must be close… oh, try at least 30 miles away… I mean, the scenery was beautiful, a very rural way in, but after 7 hours on the road, staring at the map constantly and watching for the next turn was absolutely no fun. Maybe if you had a co-pilot, but solo, I think there has to be a perhaps longer but more interstate oriented route out of here…. I hope…
Speaking of solo, I had expected to pick up a friend from deviant art on the way up, but he had to back out because things came up to keep him in Charlotte. I had planned this trip solo anyway, but it would have been nice to have had some company on that long tedious drive, let me tell you. Maybe another time.
Once here, I checked into the hotel and then headed over to the Welcome center to get my tickets. I’m paid up for my whole stay in Williamsburg for entry to the colonial village and to Jamestowne and Yorktown. That also includes the shuttle buses to those attractions. After that drive, I think I’m going to let someone else do the driving for the next few days. I’m more or less in walking distance of the village. I walk at a good pace and it’s about 10 minutes away.
I also booked a couple of tours and some evening activities in the village. It’s kind of nuts how busy they are. I had thought to be a little less schedule oriented here, but the lady at the counter advised against that. In fact, as I went through the schedule of things I wanted to do, for three of the four, I snagged the last spots on those tours… yoiks! So, looks like all day tomorrow is Colonial Williamsburg, I have a tour at 10am and another in the afternoon and one more that night. Wednesday is probably all day at Jamestowne. And then Thursday is probably part day here and part day in Yorktown.
Williamsburg was already pretty much shut down when I got the tickets done and drove back over here. But I tested out the walk and got some evening shots of the village. Beautiful warm light. When I have the energy to actually go through these shots….
So, back here, grabbed some dinner, and now it’s time for TV and bed…
Aren’t I exciting as all get out?
