Back to exploring today. We drove Charlotte to a part of Colonial National Historical Park, specifically, Jamestown. They have a nice visitor center where they extracted $5 from each of us for Preservation Virginia. We have no idea what Preservation Virginia might be but we narrowed it down to two options: the state is collecting fees above the national park fees (which we avoided by using our National Park access pass) or Preservation Virginia is the name of the folks doing the archeological excavations in Jamestown township site. Since it rained while we were here, we did not go see whether any excavations were in progress, leaving us stumped on Preservation Virginia. Folks without the access pass get soaked for $14.
Beyond the tourist center is a very nice loop drive of 8 miles that takes you through Jamestown Island. This area was settled in 1609 or so and was burned to the ground by Nathaniel Bacon over a dispute regarding protection of settlers from those pesky Indians who pretty much got the short end of the stick after English whitey arrived. Most of the island is heavily wooded with deciduous hardwood trees with loads of animals sneaking about in the brush. We spotted 3 bald eagles in this part of the state.
From the park we drove up State Highway 5 which is also labeled the Colonial Parkway until we reached Shirley Plantation. On this drive we spotted a pretty big turtle hanging out in the middle of a gravel road and a big ground hog in addition to loads of birds. The flora near the roads here is gorgeous and seeing a bunch of animals only makes it better.
On the way back to the Invader we stopped in a town called West Point (not the one with a military academy) to engage in some mundane shopping for RV 12 volt light bulbs. During our trip back to the Invader from the light bulb store, we encountered a restaurant called Captain George’s which offered regular menu items or an enormous seafood buffet for $32. We both selected the buffet which ultimately left us almost painfully overstuffed on 3 kinds of fish, scallops, a couple versions of shrimp, fried oysters, Oysters Rockefeller, crab legs, clam chowder, chicken tortellini, prime rib and a bunch of other stuff I didn’t have space for before capping off with a variety of desserts including eclairs, chocolate chip cookies, baklava, and carrot cake. I am ashamed at how much of this food I was able to devour before I couldn’t. However, I have been able to recover from my remorse.