We love going down to Williamsburg every year between Chan and Spence's birthday to celebrate. It is a celebration that we made it through another tax season with Nate working long hours and weeks. And the birthdays of two of our handsome boys.
This year we were lucky enough to get to spend it with my parents. The kids were soooo excited for them to be coming into town. We spent the first day at Jamestown. It is amazing that we could spend a whole day just dedicated to this, but you can.
We lucked out and that week was free National Park week, so any national park you got into for free. Those that have never been down there it is split between a national park and part is owned privately. The Jamestowne Settlement is owned privately and is kind of pricey for all of us to get into, but we braved the cost and did it.
We started with the National Park side of it first. They have glass blowing..that the kids absolutely love. They could sit and watch them do this process for an hour. I love that they dress is time period clothing, so you feel like you are there. Then we ate lunch really quick in the car. We stopped in the visitor center and went through the museum really quickly. Anyone who knows Wes, knows that you have to move through things really fast.
They have a great outside exhibit of parts of different homes, a church, foundation of buildings, and statues of some pretty important people during that period. My kids loved the Pocahontas statue and liked holding her hand.
They have a newer museum that you walk on a clear floor, to see the original footings of the building that was there before. I was chasing Wes most of the time, so what I could see of the museum it was fun. They had a skeleton that they found while digging. They had a diagram of where they found him, how they think he died and that maybe there was a lady also buried with him.
Wesley's favorite part was watching the bug huge ferry carrying the cars across the James river. That river is so big, that the kids kept insisting it was a lake or ocean. They said that rivers were a lot smaller and that you can cross them easier. I love that my kids are interested in history.
We then went to Jamestowne Settlement, and it was definitely worth the money going there. They have three ships that you can go through and they give you a little information on the boat. Some of the stories were really interesting and I learn something each time we go through them. The kids were able to steer one and work the bilge pump.
They have a little settlement set up with some stores that they might have had and a church. They even had a real garden with things that the settlers might have grown. Again the people were dressed in period clothing and in each house or building they talked about what happened in that building. Inside the museum they had a few videos on the crossing of the early settlers and the trials that they had to go through.
The kids loved running through the museum and looking into the houses and boats they had set up inside. I think we really wore my parents out, with all the walking that we did. They were so gracious that they got a condo for all of us. It was nice to come back to every night after the long days we put in.
No comments:
Post a Comment