Jamestown and the beginning of Colonial America

Dateline: Jamestown Settlement, Virginia
November 8, 2007 2140 hours

We are amazed to find that we have been on the road for a full month today! We left Carol’s sister’s home yesterday morning after having breakfast and receiving some extremely good advice about the trip up here and what to do from her husband (Thanks Freddie!!!). It was a long drive, even by California standards. We passed through three states. As we approached within 40 miles of the South Carolina border we began seeing all of these HUGE and colorful roadside billboards for this place called “South of the Border.” I mean, one sign every half-mile on each side of the road with some slogan or other (The BIGGEST hat shop in the world!; The BEST miniature golf course in the world! (everything but the infamous 13-foot gator and gator head whirligigs)). So, of course, being dumb touristas, we decided to stop there for lunch. We FINALLY got to the border and the place is out-of-business!! Locked up tighter than a drum. Must have spent too much dinero on road signs, Mate.

Right outside of Charleston we noticed the temperatures began to chill quickly. As we moved through North Carolina “South of the Border” was replaced with “JR’s DISCOUNT EVERYTHING STORE!!” at the North Carolina-Virginia border. However, one of the things they were advertising was deeply discounted high quality cigars, which got Steve’s attention pronto. Okay: Think a cross between K-Mart and the cheesiest flea marker you have ever seen on steroids, and you got the idea (check the photos at our Google Picasa photo album. However, the place WAS open, and Steve said he has never seen so many cigars in a humidor room in his life. He scored very well, according to him. You can also check out some of the other photos we took after driving way too long!!! But it was fun, as always!

We rolled through Virginia, and it is surprising how different all of these states look to the visitor. Florida is FLAT, FLAT, FLAT. Georgia is beautiful in its own way, and the state is undergoing road construction from one end to the other. South Carolina has this very cosmopolitan look about it, even from the freeway. North Carolina, on the other hand, is one trailer park after another for miles and miles. Virginia is a mixture of all of the good parts of California, excluding the mountains. Rolling farmlands, beautiful back country roads (again, thanks Freddie!) and quaint small towns and villages, large acres of hay and other crops, horses and cattle. We rolled into the little Berg of Scotland Virginia just as the sun was setting, and boarded the ferry that would take us across the James River into Colonial Williamsburg. It was just loading as we got to the dock, so we drove right on-board, and in another 15 minutes we completing our 7.5 hour journey from Hanahan. We checked in, did laundry, and treated ourselves to a nice dinner.

It dawned cold and partly cloudy this morning, and we headed out to (where else) Starbucks for breakfast. Colonial Williamsburg, in our humble opinion, is highly overrated. We did enjoy the William and Mary campus, and walked around a bit through the town, but decided to go our to the Jamestown Settlement park and drive the Colonial Highway in search of Fall Colors. It was a GREAT choice! We had been advised to cut our days in Williamsburg a day short and head to Monticello for a full day, which we will do tomorrow. Steve says he apologizes for the many photos he took that look like school projects of the Jamestown Settlement, but our granddaughter Alyssa is a fifth-grader, and of course that means colonial history, so grandpa decided to help her with her homework with a photo essay of England’s first (sort of) successful colony. One comment, though…. If you saw the photos we took at sea of the affects of being in the North and South Atlantic during rough seas on a ship that is 1,000 feet long and weighs 109,000 TONS, consider the dimensions in the photograph of the “Susan Constant,” which is the ship the settlers came over here on. It is 116 feet long and there were 24 crewmen and 50 passengers on that ship, and it took the almost FIVE MONTHS to get from England to America!! The balcony on our stateroom was larger than this ship. What strong and determined people. The museum is quite impressive, and the artifacts from the 1500’s and 1600’s (which we could not photograph) are simply priceless. The quality of the hand-drawn and hand-written script in books that are 400 – 700 pages in length had to take years to publish just one single copy. It just whetted our appetite for Monticello.

Please take a close look at the autumn colors pictures Steve shot today. The colors are simply fabulous! By the way, we have had a number of requests for copies of these photos. Steve has the following message: The photos are taken with his Nikon digital camera, and the originals are shot at 10.2 megapixels, using very high quality lenses that are computerized – he has a 200mm zoom lens that is an f2.5 (whatever the heck that means) – so the bottom line is if you want a photo to make a huge copy of for a wall print or whatever, he says these can be blown up in increments of feet! Seattle Film Works makes all of his and they do a super job on the very large ones. All he asks is that you give him credit for his work. If you have other questions please send them to us via email and he will get back with you.

So, until the next blog update, we remain…..