Day of dread for your rotund author – time to do the laundry. We used the park’s washers and dryers and they worked perfectly, unlike many units we have encountered on this trip.
The temperature today is about 95 and the humidity in the morning was about 92% so we did not do too much exploring. We drove into Colonial Beach and bought diesel for tomorrow’s driving duties where I encountered a guy filling up who had a gorgeous 11-month old chocolate Lab. I was busy schmoozing with the pup when Peg returned from the interior of the 7-11 and discreetly notified me that other folks wanted to purchase fuel and my vehicle was blocking the pumps. We skedaddled away with some nasty glares directed at our tailgate.
We are delighted that the Invader has good air conditioning because without it today we would have been miserable. Stepping outside the Invader, even just to walk 25 feet to Charlotte, was a sweat-inducing event.

Started out the day with a total lack of planning and ended up wandering into Maryland from Virginia over the Potomac River Bridge on Highway 301. We really had no agenda for Maryland so we went to the Visitor Center at the border, putzed around a few rural highways and chickened out by going back to Virginia. We are certain of one thing about Maryland – they charge you $6 to take a two-axle vehicle across the Potomac Bridge back to Virginia. Now we can say we have been in Maryland albeit for about an hour. Peg drove almost all the way resulting in our being able to find our way home to Colonial Beach.
Not surprisingly, the north bank of the Potomac in Maryland looks quite similar to the south bank of the Potomac in Virginia except Virginia has discount cigarettes as soon as you leave Maryland.

My day to drive today so I elected to explore some Civil War battlefields west of Fredricksburg, VA. There were not less than two U.S. Grant campaigns through this area and those that occurred in 1863 were pretty substantial failures for the miserable Union soldiers as some 36,000 were either wounded or killed at the battlefields (Chancellorsville, the Wilderness and Spotsylvania) during Grant’s first pass through the area. General Lee lost some 24,000 soldiers giving the South a 3:2 advantage in the killing. Unfortunately for Lee, Grant could call up replacements and Lee could not. This problem ultimately spelled doom to the South. Lee started with over 100,000 men in the Army of Northern Virginia but ended up surrendering in 1865 with only 13,000 survivors.
The area is absolutely beautiful. It must have horrified the Virginia soldiers to watch this part of the state torn apart by no quarter battles with artillery fire, tons of blood and tremendous reductions in the number of men left at the end of the war. At Spotsylvania, the armies fought in heavily wooded terrain which caught fire during the battle, incinerating all the wounded and dead. A truly bleak period in American history. I’m glad I was not there.

Caramba! Another travel day as we left TT Williamsburg and headed for Colonial Beach TT in, amazingly, Colonial Beach, VA. Just like our first travel day in Virginia, this second day again reminded us that the roads in Virginia are either paved by the blind or the citizens of this great state have learned to accept substandard paving. We initially got on the road by traveling NW on I-64, transitioned to I-295 which joined up with northbound I-95 north of Richmond. Virtually all of these nice Federal highways are pockmarked with corduroy pavement, lumpy bridge approaches and assorted other pavement nightmares that makes one wonder if he were traveling on a primary highway or driving a Matchbox toy car around on the Elephant Man’s potholed head. I feared for my dental work.
Finally we escaped the interstate highway and drove east across the northern neck of VA to Colonial Beach TT which is a spacious campground. It is very quiet, the Potomac is only about 200 yards away and the surrounding countryside is very scenic with loads of birds and animals. It also has no wi-fi and poor phone reception with our crummy Sprint provider. We can do w/o phone and wi-fi for a few days.
5/15/15 Today was Peggy’s day at the helm of Charlotte the Pickup so she elected to go to Stafford Hall, the birthplace of Robert E. Lee, famous Confederate General and genuinely sharp strategist. As we have found at numerous places we have visited on our journeys, claims made can sometimes be carefully crafted to make stupid tourists, like us, to think more of a place than it warrants. In this case, General Lee was indeed born here but moved away when he was four years old, substantially before he became famous for creating strategies geared to rubbing out thousands of Union soldiers who were commanded by lesser officers. The estate, mostly occupied by other, not-so-famous Lees, is very nice but they will not allow paying guests to take pictures inside the plantation house. The outside or more photographic parts of the house are quite nice but this is no Biltmore Estate. The walls of the house are 2 foot thick brick construction which may be a reason the building is still standing.
There is a gravel road through the estate which leads to a gorgeous overlook of the Potomac River and Maryland across the river in addition to a grist mill powered by a big water wheel. The road to the mill is a bit steep but was no problem for Charlotte.
Altogether, I really admired the plantation grounds but was underwhelmed by the house. From Stafford Hall we went just a couple miles to where George Washington was born. Same story as Stafford Hall – George may have popped out here but ultimately set up his estate at Mount Vernon, a good distance north up by Washington, D.C. Maybe we will get a look at that place when we go towards Washington.

We had some very vague plans to do something today but were unable to muster up enough energy to go anywhere. Instead, we made reservations for campgrounds for the remainder of our time in Virginia and some sites in Pennsylvania, the next state to be cursed with our presence. We also made some reservations for the 4th of July weekend in Maine since getting reservations anywhere on holiday weekends we have found to be problematic. Unfortunately, we were forced to drink more Guinness to assist us in our endeavors. It seems Guinness is very good for this kind of effort.

Started out the day with another trip to see Colonial Williamsburg since our $50 passes we bought the first day there are good through the end of the year. We initially went to the Governor’s Palace which is substantially more elegant than all the other buildings in town. It was only about 95 degrees and the humidity was only 92% so after visiting the palace we were able to find a great 17th century tavern, Chowning’s, that served very good flights of ale. After a bit of ale, we wandered around a bit more before chickening out due to tough environmental conditions. Williamsburg is pretty neat to see if you have any interest in history.
We then took another trip into the Jamestown area, including another pass down the 8 mile loop drive, before we headed across the free ferry operated by the Virginia Department of Transportation. It leaves the north side of the James River near Jamestown and drops you off on the south side of the river at a spot called Scotland.
We meandered around the south side of the river going first to Nathaniel Bacon’s Castle in a town called, surprisingly, Bacon’s Castle. The castle, formerly occupied by the arsonist Bacon, is an impressive brick, multi-story building with a number of outbuildings for farming stuff. From Bacon’s Castle we headed to a place called Chippoke Plantation which was not named for the tenants who went by the name of Powell or something. This plantation of some 1400 acres has operated continuously for some 400 years. The house is another large brick residence with abundant outbuildings, one of which housed some beautiful carriages. This was probably a very nice place to live but when we were there, we encountered some of the most aggressive biting flies we can remember. No amount of arm waving, spastic flailing or whirling could drive off these dedicated pests so after about 10 or 15 minutes we retreated to the nice air-conditioned refuge of Charlotte’s cab.
We gladly withdrew from this fly-infested hell and drove back to Scotland, crossed back to the north side of the river and headed home to drink some Guinness.

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.

Peggy stayed up real late last night and did not rise until after 10 this morning. We ate a late breakfast, did our shower stuff and promptly sat down to take a day off from sightseeing since it is so strenuous. Sightseeing is right up there with drinking, reading and purchasing expensive meals for pure calorie expenditure and we sort of elected to loaf around and watch cable TV instead. It is very trying but we were able to tough it out.
It did rain a bit today but not enough to make us change our minds about doing nothing.

Today we drove down the lumpy paving of I-64 to Newport News, VA, to visit the Mariner’s Museum, a maritime museum with a bunch of great exhibits. We initially paid them $14 a head to get in and wandered into a large section of the museum that dealt exclusively with the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia which most folks call the Merrimack. The USS Merrimack was salvaged by the Confederates after the shipyard at Newport News was burned by retreating Union forces at the beginning of the Civil War. The partially destroyed Merrimack was re-outfitted as the ironclad CSS Virginia and was shortly thereafter involved in the first battle of ironclads which ended in a decisive draw.
The Virginia / Monitor exhibit is extensive and we were beginning to think that the museum should be called the Monitor / Virginia place when we arrived back in the lobby and found out we had only seen a little fraction of the facility. The place also has a great variety of sailing ship bowsprit art, model ships, a small craft museum with real boats, a section on submarines, cannons, mortars, reconstructions of parts of sailing vessels, lots of biographical material about seagoing types, maritime instruments for timekeeping and navigation, a life-size reconstruction of the USS Monitor, reconstructions of the Monitor’s turret and the actual turret that they recovered off Hampton Roads, VA, which is still in an enormous conservation water tank until it quits exuding salt.
After wandering about in the museum until our feet bellowed for relief, we departed and drove to Yorktown. At this location you can see all the old earthworks for the protection of guns and soldiers for both the British and the U.S. sides in the Battle of Yorktown. Yorktown was where George Washington and the Continental Army surrounded the British and their commander, Cornwallis. Once surrounded by artillery, even the Brits knew they were screwed since there were Continental guns on most sides of their garrison and the York River at their backs. It did not take long for them to bail out, having the British Navy pick them up and take them back to the U.K. We won and they lost. It is probably fortunate that we won here since the Continental Army was much harried during the war and had Cornwallis not gathered all his forces here to be driven into the sea and the war continued, the result could have been quite different. If it had been different, we might still be eating crummy food and driving on the wrong side of the road.
We decided to splurge on a meal in a seafood restaurant on the way home but, as usual, the place we selected to eat was closed so we went back to the Invader and had good food.

Culture day for the uncultured. We hopped in Charlotte and drove to the Visitor Center parking lot at Colonial Williamsburg, a carefully reconstructed likeness of original Williamsburg. We started the day in the facility museum which had a great variety of museum stuff. There is a bunch of art, primarily portraits of rich folks that were pivotal in W’burg’s early history. They also have an enormous colonial furniture collection, lots of china and glass, a bunch of old weather vanes, a reconstructed mental institution where is is evident that loony care was horribly bleak, Paul Revere’s silver works and a load of old handmade quilts which Peggy really enjoyed.
After spending a few hours in the museum, we strolled down one side of the main drag of W’burg, taking in the colonial armament magazine, magnificent horse-drawn carriages, a stop for beer and a cookie apparently from 1619, some shops, an armory facility and ending up at the Capitol building. One side of the building is where the colonial House of Burgesses met to legislate and the other side was the crown’s side where the laws that were contrary to British interests were rejected upstairs and downstairs was the big court of that era. Only really nasty crimes like armed robbery, rape and murder were adjudicated here with minor crimes being handled at the lower county courts. The building is a beautiful brick structure with allegedly four brick-thick walls, oval and circular decorative windows and, fortunately, air conditioning because is was pretty warm today.
This place requires substantial amounts of walking since motor vehicles are not allowed inside W’burg during the daytime. The rather stiff multi-day entrance fee of $50 covers all the museums and exhibits but not actual admission to the area which is quite scenic. However, without access to the exhibits, the place just wouldn’t be the same. After putting in our 5 or 6 hours on our feet, we retreated to the Invader to loaf for the remainder of the day.