Jamestown!

Sometimes it's almost too simple. The few times a year that my kids are up early enough to actually GET to the school bus, I mention the poor kids who are actually out waiting for it. As a result, Holly and Trevor have never had much of a burning desire to go. Although they woke up this morning while it was still dark, we left an hour after the school bus went by.

It's almost a five hour drive to Jamestown. I had to make the first bathroom stop after 30 minutes. (Seriously.) For posterity's sake, I should add that it was the first of three such stops, but the kids never had to get out of the car. Sigh.



We drove through everything from overcast to blue skies, to torrential downpour. The temperature, however, remained a pretty constant 80-plus degrees. I'm so thankful we live in the western/central part of the state where the humidity is much lower.



We didn't know what to expect from Jamestown. This was a spur of the moment decision made just last night. Trevor's studying Jamestown this week; Holly did last week. This kids will not be this close in an historical time period again, and this is the last year Holly will study American history. We live so close to Jamestown; there's no excuse to not visit. I kept looking at our calendar, and the only good time in the next six weeks was this week. I mentioned it to Robert, and while he wasn't initially thrilled with the idea, my charming personality apparently won him over (or something like that). I knew Robert would prefer to stay home, so he did.

A Powhatan village

We went straight to Historic Jamestown, which replicates the local Indian culture and settlement. A mile away, the real Jamestown continues to undergo an archaeological excavation.



It's Homeschool Week in Williamsburg; that had nothing to do with why we came. It was a nice extra to enjoy the discounted ticket prices.



We wandered through the Indian village and buildings. It was surprising that everything was so open, real animal skins, tools, pottery and furniture that we could touch and use in the houses, and shells available here to scrape the hide.



We were able to board replicas of two of the three ships which originally brought settlers to Jamestown. At 116 feet long, the largest ship, the Susan Constant, carried 71 men for five months across the Atlantic Ocean.



I was thinking of my family, and though the four of us love each other very much, five months of just the four of us in our house would drive us batty, I'm sure.



We made our way to the recreated Jamestown settlement.



Trevor quickly fell into the role of pastor, lol.



We wandered through the different buildings, small homes, bunkhouses, the church, the smithy, and we viewed a gun demonstration.



We all enjoyed Jamestown. We have free tickets for Yorktown tomorrow, but I'm pretty sure we'll skip that.

We made our way to our hotel. One of the highlights of every hotel stay, for some reason, seems to be eating dinner on the bed while watching Cartoon Network.



Early bedtime tonight.