October 6 to 9, 2003

We said our family goodbyes on Sunday and on Monday pointed the van south for a quick stop at the Fillings in Baltimore. Then it was off to Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, and a visit with my brother Bob.

On Tuesday morning Mal & Jake were getting ready for school when these photos were taken.

Next stop was a short side trip to a marina on the Occoquan River, just south of Washington, D.C., where my sister Mary was looking at a boat to buy. She wasn't there but the boat was and here it is:

She didn't buy this boat but she and Tom will probably buy a similar vessel soon. Hopefully the Coast Guard will issue some sort of warning to all other boaters in the vicinity when Mary takes the helm!

Williamsburg, Jamestown, Yorktown

Down in Colonial Williamsburg (or "CW" as we regulars call it) we had a nice visit with Bob. He wasn't able to attend the Penn State weekend due to his job at CW. They would have had to close the city down if he had left for a couple days. All heck would have broken loose!

On Wednesday we took Colonial Parkway from Jamestown to Yorktown. CW is about halfway between the two. There sure are a lot of historical sites on that peninsula!

The actual site of Jamestown, now a National Park, was closed due to damage from hurricane Isabel. We went instead to "Jamestown Settlement" a re-creation of the original, complete with a Native American village where Lorri is seen above exiting a prototype Airstream trailer, I mean an Indian dwelling.

Lorri & Bob inside a dwelling

Three pretty faces.

Scenes from Jamestown Settlement

Bob and I had to try on these helmets. When the soldier's blunderbusses ran out of whatever it was they shot, the soldiers simply lowered their heads and charged the enemy on foot, causing severe laughing and occasionally skewering the slow to react with their pointy helmets. Of course, that tactic always drew a 15 yard penalty for spearing.

This is a replica of one of the three "ships" that brought the original settlers to Jamestown. This one, the Susan Constant, was 116 long, had no restaurants, cocktail lounges, swimming pools, deck chairs or bathrooms for the 6,000 or so passengers crammed aboard. What a cruise that must have been!

Leaving Jamestown we took the Parkway north to Yorktown where the British surrendered to the combined American and French forces, ending the Revolutionary War.

Here is Lorri and the Victory Monument.

Here is the famous cannonball still stuck in the side of General Thomas Nelson's house. As we all know, General Nelson was a signer of the Declaration of Independence and is buried beside Grace Church, originally built in 1697 and pictured below.

Here we are in front of the York River.

At the Yorktown National Historic Site we toured the redoubts and checked out the leftover cannon.

It had been several weeks since the hurricane hit but damage was still evident everywhere and crews were still working long hours to clear fallen trees and debris.

This uprooted tree was just outside our hotel room and is one of about a zillion that we saw as we drove around.

Here are a couple CW scenes. We spent most of Thursday exploring CW and shopping. What fun, except for the shopping.