Tuesday, July 20, 2021- Our Anniversary in Williamsburg

      Today is our 30th wedding anniversary and we decided to spend it in Williamsburg.  We woke up in Hopewell, packed up our car and followed Route 5 towards Williamsburg.  Route 5 runs along the north bank of the James River and was always one of our favorite drives to take.  It goes by most of the big plantations, though you can't really see anything of them from the road.  The road is scenic because of the beautiful trees that are growing along it, usually on both sides of it, and often so close to the road that they touch over the top of it.  It was a peaceful and pretty drive down, though no one behind us wanted to drive the 45 mile an hour speed limit.

     When we got to the Williamsburg area, Julie remembered following the Colonial Parkway to the Colonial Williamsburg Visitor Center, parking there and then following a footpath to the historic part of town.  Scott didn't remember that as well, but Julie knew what she was talking about.  We found a shady spot to park, entered the Visitor Center, and then headed over to the historic area.  There is a new bridge to help make the walk a little safer and it has interesting plaques embedded in it.  It begins by telling you that you are leaving the 21st Century and entering the past.  Then as you walk on the timeline back ticks off how things were different back then.   (It does a similar thing in reverse as you walk back again.)

     We passed the windmill and entered the historic area near the Governor's Palace.  Scott's sure he's never been in the Governor's Palace before, but Julie thinks she has been.  We've never paid for admission to the buildings in Williamsburg before, though we have seen the inside of some through different workshops and conferences that we've attended here- mostly through Scott's tourism job.   The plan today, though was to take it easy and just stroll through the streets like we usually do.  Abby wouldn't be patient enough for tours.

     We stopped at a bench near the front of the Governor's Palace and got Abby to eat some grapes that we had brought.  We watched several horse drawn carriages go by.  Abby said that horses say "neigh."  One of the drivers saw her pointing and laughingly told his horse, "Look, horse!  A child!"

     Abby never likes to move in the direction that we want to go in.  At malls and places like that, she always starts to head the opposite way  The same was true today.  In fact, she was content to stay in one spot and play in the dirt.  We didn't make a lot of forward progress as a result of that.  We sat for a while in front of the store of "Jno Greenhow," and Scott eventually went in and got some bottles of cold water there.  One thing is for sure, Abby makes friends everywhere she goes and everyone seems to like talking to her.  After staying there a little while, we moved down the street to the edge of Merchants Square and found a bench in the shade where it was a little cooler.  By that point it was about 11:30 and that meant it was time for lunch.  We ate ham sandwiches made from food that Julie had bought at Food Lion last night and enjoyed a quiet little picnic there.

     After lunch, we went to some of the stores in Merchants Square, though we had to take turns doing so.  Abby was either napping a little bit or watching TicToc videos on Julie's phone, but wasn't in the mood to behave in the stores.   After spending some time there, we made our way back towards the Governor's Palace, and Abby finally fell asleep for a real nap.  The problem was that it was so warm and humid and we didn't want her getting sick from overheating as she was sleeping.  It was after 1:00, and we decided to try to make our way to the hotel.  We had to walk the path back to the Visitor Center first, and Scott took Abby ahead in her stroller in order to get her to the air conditioning, while Julie took her time and came a little slower.  We all cooled down there and went to our hotel.

     We always say that we don't expect a lot from a hotel- just a place to flop.  That's what we've been in for the last three nights- some bare-bones minimum places that didn't cost very much.  They were so bare-bones that the last hotel didn't even have Wi-Fi.  We had to use Julie's phone as a hotspot in order to write the blog.  There seemed to be switches missing on the lights in the room, and there were cracks and nicks in the walls.  The hotel we're in tonight may not be anything special, but it feels luxurious after the last two.  We don't usually mention the names of hotels in this blog, but lets just say that the first two felt like we were laying on the side of the "roadway" and it is much more "comfortin'" to be where we are now.

     We chose this hotel because it was relatively close to the historic area and it had a pool.  After we got checked in and unpacked the car, it was about 2:00 PM and we decided to make use of that pool.  All three of us went in and Abby absolutely loved it.  It was her first time in anything bigger than a bathtub, but she took to the water like a fish.  Julie has no doubt that Abby is ready for a children's swimming program now.  Abby was all smiles and giggles as she was passed between Mom and Dad . Yes, even Scott went in, and it has been years since has done something like that.  The whiteness under his farmer's tan is partial testimony to that.  Abby didn't want to leave at all, but once we got her in the car to find dinner, she was asleep almost instantly.  

     When we did get out of the pool we were hungry, but didn't know what we wanted.  Julie wanted to find a barbecue place, but when we did find one it was hard to order there.  The menu at the drive-through was confusing and they weren't taking any orders inside.    We were getting hangry and frustrated, but we did find a Five Guys and got food there.  We got it to go and ate it in the hotel room.   We've had weirder anniversary dinners.  

     After dinner we went to look for the shopping that we remembered along Route 60.  We were a little disappointed.  The huge Yankee Candle store that Julie remembered so fondly is closed and vacant.  We went out to the Outlet Shops but were a little disappointed in them.  They were not laid out well and were hard to follow.  We went to a few including a bookstore, but many of them were already closed since it was 7:00.  We were a little surprised that one of the anchor stores there was a Food Lion, but we had thought of several more things we could get there, so we did "made some groceries" and called it a night.

     Like her big sister Anna, Emma had to stay home this time because she has a job.  She's working at Kohl's now.  We heard that she went for lunch with Grandpa and Grandma Wright today at Rayzor's.   It was good to hear that she got to do that.   Yesterday, she and Anna went out to shop at Target.  

Monday, July 19, 2021- Petersburg

      We didn't plan this trip very well.  The original plan was to drive to Petersburg on Sunday, spend Monday and part of Tuesday seeing the sights here, and then continuing on to Williamsburg on Tuesday.   The problem with that plan is that practically everything is closed in Petersburg for those two days.  We discovered that the city museums like Blandford Church were closed about a week ago.  That's why we left on Saturday after Anna's birthday lunch, hoping to get here earlier on Sunday, but that didn't end up working and we missed the city museums.  King's Barbecue was closed by the time we got to town and won't open again until Wednesday.  Pamplin Park is closed on Monday, but will be open again on Tuesday.  We didn't seriously consider rearranging the days of our trip until we had already paid for our two nights here, and now it doesn't seem like we'll be able to do that.

     The National Battlefield is open, though, so we thought we'd take our time this morning and go to the Visitor Center when it opened.   Scott went to a nearby Dunkin Doughnuts to get breakfast for Abby and Julie.  There were a lot of choices in the area around the hotel, and it seems that the Hopewell side of Fort Lee has continued to grow.

     We were a little surprised to find that only the gift shop was open at the Visitor Center.  They had rearranged the gift shop displays to block the entrance to the small museum.  We expect it was COVID related, but Chancellorsville had their museum open yesterday.  The ranger there said that it was his first day back since 2020, and he too was a little surprised to learn that morning that Blandford Church was closed.   Scott took a chance and bought a couple of things.  He bought a CD of the battle tour, but it turned out to be either the same of very similar to the old version that he had digitized from the cassette.  He bought a second CD of antebellum architecture in Petersburg.  The rangers weren't even sure what it was, and it turned out to just be a collection of .jpg picture files. 

     Anyway, we took the walk around Battery 5, where the fighting began in what would become the Siege of Petersburg, and went down to see the "Dictator," a mortar that could lob 225 pound shells into the city.  From there, we listened to the version of the park tour that Scott had digitized (since we had no CD player in the car and didn't yet know what the CD he just bought had on it).  We took our time and drove through the main unit of the park.  This portion of the battlefield is now called the "Eastern Front" and the blue tour signs mark it that way.  We stopped where at the recreated trenches where the reenactors would normally be and at each of the numbered tour stops.  Julie and Abby didn't always leave the car, but Abby liked being able to look around again on the slow park roads.  Scott walked at Fort Stedman and on the to next stop at Fort Haskell.  Then again at the Crater, where the 48th Pennsylvania had tunneled under the Confederate lines and successfully exploded their mine.   It was a disaster of a fight for the Union there, though.  

     By the time we had finished that portion of the battlefield, it was certainly time for lunch.  We grabbed lunch at Wendy's and drove past Fort Lee again to go back to the hotel to eat there where we could cool off and let Abby run and wiggle.  After lunch we drove through Old Town to see if we any shops were open on Monday and see if we wanted to stop there today.  We opted to continue with the park tour because Abby was sleepy and we correctly guessed that she would nap for much of the rest of the tour.  We made our way back to Crater Road and started to follow Flank Road around the southern and western edges of Petersburg.  This is the portion of the battlefield that is now called the "Western Front," and is marked with red signs.  We got a little lost but we corrected it each time and continued to listen to the tour tape all of the way to Fort Gregg, west of town where the last defense of Petersburg was made before the evacuation of the city in April 1865.

    After we finished with our tour of the official battlefield we were in the neighborhood of Pamplin Park, so we tested our memories to see if we could find it.  It took us a while, but in our defense, it has grown up a lot there, and the park itself doesn't look much like it used to.  We didn't go in because we're saving it for another day.

     Instead we went into Petersburg, found Sycamore Street and headed south to "Fred" the World War I soldier, bore left and found Johnson Road where our apartment was.  We had actually driven in the  Tanglewood complex there when we were driving around last night but Scott had an idea.  He wanted to see if we could go in to see the model apartment that they show to prospective renters.  He wondered if it would look much like the apartment that they lived in twenty-five years ago.  It was amazing, and the absolute best part of the day because the model apartment looked almost exactly like the one that we lived in for three years.  The carpet was the same color.  The kitchen seemed almost identical.  It even smelled like it.  We got lost in our reminiscences there pretty quickly.  Luckily, the apartment manager seemed to be enjoying showing us around to.  This apartment was so much like ours that it was hard to not start our sentences with "This was where..." event though we were obviously a few doors down from where it really was.  ["Wags chewed up 'this' rug."  "I was 'here' when the tornado struck." and things like that.  Scott was a little surpised that the office manager didn't know what he meant by THE tornado, but she was "only" 36 years old.]  Scott has often thought about how weird it seems that there are houses that he will never see the inside of again- Uncle Don's house, Aunt Joyce's house, Grandma Jung's house, and so on.   There was something exciting and magical about our little nostalgia trip to the apartment complex today.

     From the apartments, Julie wanted to test her muscle memory and see if she could find the school where she worked.  It is no longer "A.P. Hill Elementary School," and losing the name of the Confederate general is definitely a good thing.  Now it is Cool Spring Elementary School.  We've seen a  lot of changes to the school district here.  The building that was the district offices on Wythe Street, for example, has been converted to luxury apartments.  Some schools are closed.  The Middle School was rebuilt.  Only two of the school have accreditation.   A.P. Hill was involved in a cheating scandal on the state tests from which at least five teachers and an administrator were fired.   When we found the building itself, it was both immediately recognizable and vastly different.  The entry way and the core of the building were the same, but there have been large additions to the front and back of the school.  Julie thinks that the back one probably has a gymnasium in it, since it didn't have one before.

     We then looked for some other landmarks that we remembered.  The hospital seems to have been torn down and moved.  We did find the Lutheran church in Walnut Hill. 

     We went north into Colonial Heights and found the Southpark Mall.   Nothing seemed familiar there, but we didn't really expect it too.  However, we were really please when there was some things for Abby to do.  She rode a little merry-go-round twice, and seemed to enjoy it.  There was also a big play area that was just her size in the middle of the mall.  Scott watched her play there for a while as Julie went to get some things near by that she needed.  It was a great place for Abby to burn some energy.  It was quiet, air-conditioned, and she had it all to herself.

     Scott wanted to try Trapezium Brewery for dinner in Old Town Petersburg.  It is named after the Trapezium House where he used to give tours.  The brewery was on the other end of Old Town, and didn't have much in common with the actual Trapezium House, but Scott has wanted to go there since he read the name on the internet a few years ago.  The beer was ok, but the food was great.  Scott's favorite beer was the "Strawberry Blonde," but he really loved the Bavarian pretzel and beer cheese that we ordered as an appetizer and the thin "brick fired" pizza that we shared for the meal.  

     After dinner, Scott had eaten more carbs than usual and wanted to walk some of them off.  Julie and Abby liked the idea of looking for animals on the battlefield again, so once more we went back to the main unit of the national battlefield and drove through on the park tour.  In three different places, Scott went on a walk with the GoPro camera strapped to his head to make videos he could watch on the treadmill when the weather is bad.  The clip on the GoPro's case broke, though, so he had to use a hair tie to keep the case closed as he walked.  He went for a walk at Battery 5 and the Dictator, Fort Stedman, and the Crater.  Unfortunately, like in Gettysburg, the battery for the GoPro gave out before he was completely done.  Also,  by the time he was done with the walk at the Crater, a park ranger was waiting to ask him to leave the park because they were closed.  It was after 8:00 and the sun had gone down, though it was still light enough to see.  Julie and Abby had gone on their own walk there and were on the far side of the Crater at that point, so he and the ranger had to wait for them to return.

     We went to Food Lion in Hopewell, near our hotel, to stock up with supplies that we needed and went back to the hotel.  Abby was excited to get some yogurt covered raisins and carried them through the whole store, but she dumped the whole plastic container on the bed when they got back to the hotel.  

     Today was certainly a good day.  We felt happy and rested and loved the things that we had seen and done today on our nostalgic trip to our past.