Williamsburg Vacation

Before I forget that I went on vacation to Williamsburg in October, I thought I ought to write a bit about it.

A happy face on an ice cream cone from Sonic.

Normally we join the family in Ocean City during the Maryland State Teachers' convention as the kids already have off from school on Friday, so we pull them out of class on Thursday, too, and make a 4-day weekend out of it.

This year we decided to do something different. We already knew that several family members were not going to the beach. We decided to go to Williamsburg instead. I liked this idea, because in addition to Williamsburg, there is also Jamestown and Yorktown, all within about 30 minutes of each other. And everyone knows that the Revolutionary War ended at Yorktown, right? Right???

My wife's cousin Kizzy heard of our plans and asked if she could go with us. Why not! We left early on Thursday morning. We knew that the D.C. beltway would be absolutely nuts (in fact, it is always nuts!), so we headed to U.S. Route 301 to go around D.C. and pick up I-95 south of D.C. and just north of Richmond.

Unfortunately for us, the weather was slightly rainy and this had an immediate impact on the traffic. It took us over an hour to get to I-97, normally a 30 minute drive. Along the way, my daughter commented that she saw a sign that said, "Keep Maryland safe and beautiful", but it had mud splashed all over it along with some bullet holes. Funny girl! She later was talking about school and said that her teacher was talking about the environment and how we need to conserve and save our resources, but then said that the teacher told the class to write a 10 page paper about saving the trees. I love her sense of humor!

We finally made it to Williamsburg about 5 hours later. So much for driving in the rain and going around D.C. to save time.

I have been to Williamsburg before, so there wasn't really much that was new to me other than I was more informed about the history since I read a lot of books about the American Revolution. Lord Dunmore fled the capital in the middle of the night and raided the munitions from the armory, remember?

Here some of the interesting things that I found in Williamsburg.

Here is Thy King's Royale Recycling Bin

And here is the King's Royale Energy Efficient Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs. They made the switch because in 18t century Williamsburg in 2009, gas lamps hadn't been invented yet and it's totally unethical to burn whale oil.

Fortunately, Williamsburg offered daycare services. We found this to be a really nice service for families.

Down in Jamestown, we all know that the first English settlement was made. Here is the King's Royale Rascal. You didn't think the King or his Royale Governor would be required to walk in all that mud, did you?

Here is one of my favorites. This is the picture of the frontierswoman getting ready to fire her musket.

Here is the picture that I took 1/100 of a second later as she fired the musket and it scared the crap out of me and made me jump three feet straight up because it was so damn loud, hence the blurriness.