Friday 27 October 2000

Packed up, bought phone card and last minute postcards from the camp site shop, and set off for Williamsburg VA - about 150 miles. Usual stop at information centre on the way for free state map and leaflets.

Top tip #7: For phone calls of a reasonable length to the UK, the best bet is EconoCard. Each call has an up-front charge of $1.50, but then it's about 2.9 cents per minute - less than a call within the USA.

The camp site - Heritage RV Park - turned out to be really nice, with big flat sites under trees and a concrete patio outside the front door. It also has a huge library, with a free book exchange facility and free videos and spoken word cassettes, by far the best that we've come across. What's more, it's half the price of the previous one. Walked around the nature trail round the perimeter of the park, then got more up to date with the web site.

Saturday 28 October 2000

Slobbed out for the day as Christine a bit poorly. Bought cheap Levis for us both from the local factory outlet; did shopping; more web site. Perhaps postcards would be easier ...

Sunday 29 October 2000

Same as Saturday, but without the Levis. Decided to stay here for two weeks rather than one as originally booked, as it's so pleasant.

Monday 30 October 2000

Finally finished web site updates and uploaded them. Hurrah. 

Drove along the Colonial Parkway, a scenic road which runs from Jamestown via Williamsburg to Yorktown, the main historic areas. Jamestown has reconstructions of an Indian village, a British settlement and three ships in the early 17th century, plus the remains of the site of the original settlement; Williamsburg is a huge (around half a square mile) reconstruction of the town as it was in the mid-1770s, including many of the original buildings and actors pretending to be locals; Yorktown is the smallest and deals with the War of Independence.

Parts of the historic sites are run as National Parks, and parts are commercial enterprises. We bought an annual National Parks ticket at Yorktown: $50 dollars, which gives access to all parks in the USA for both of us for a full year. Walked around the site looking at monuments and ruined buildings, but there isn't a great deal to get excited about.

The weather continues to be brilliant. It's now officially the driest, warmest October since records began.

Tuesday 31 October 2000

Went into Jamestown for the day. Introductory film, then visited the reconstructed Indian village ...

... the replica ships ...

... and the settlement ...

... where I was induced to dress up in armour and pose for a photograph. This may have been a mistake ...

... as the jeans and jumper spoil the effect somewhat.

The re-enactors are extremely knowledgeable and professional, as indeed they should be as they're paid employees rather than volunteers.

Interesting info #5: Although the settlement of America by the British is usually celebrated as beginning with the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers in Massachusetts in 1620 after their flight from religious persecution, the truth is a little more prosaic. It actually began in Jamestown, Virginia in 1607 (ignoring a failed attempt at Roanoke in the late 16th century where all the settlers died or disappearfed) by people who intended to come in for a couple of years, make a quick buck by finding gold or anything else of value that they could rip off, and getting out again. The choice of Jamestown was determined by its defensibility from the Spanish who were pretty well established on the East coast and hated our guts, rather than its long term viability as somewhere to settle. In fact it was a pretty bad place; there was little fresh water as the river is tidal at that point, and the soil is poor. The summers were also very hot, and by misfortune there were a couple of hard winters as well, so a lot of them died.

Many of the colonists were 'gentlemen', usually second or subsequent sons from wealthy families who wouldn't inherit and therefore had to go and try to make it on their own, who had none of the skills necessary for building a settlement, growing crops etc. This of course had not been the intention; they had expected to be supplied mainly by ships from England for the limited time that they were there rather than having to look after themselves. The Indians bailed them out with food on a number of occasions, although they weren't very keen on white people having had bad experiences with the Spanish, and relations slowly deteriorated. After around five years some poorer but more competent settlers arrived, it was discovered that tobacco would grow well and was worth exporting, and things began to take off. Black slaves were first introduced in 1619.

Wednesday 1 November 2000

Back into Jamestown to finish seeing what we'd missed the previous day, plus the remains of the original settlement in the National Park.

Interesting info #6: Pocahontas did not marry Captain John Smith; she married John Rolfe, one of the settlers. If you go and see the Disney film, point this out to the cinema manager and ask for your money back.

Went into historic Williamsburg in the evening to have a look round. This was not very successful, as they have 18th century-strength street lighting and you can't see very much. We did have nice crab cakes in a restaurant though.

Thursday 2 November 2000

Drove the 40 miles into Richmond to visit the Fine Arts museum. Spent over eight hours looking round; at the end we were pretty much galleried-out. They had a special Impressionists exhibit, but we've seen more Monets than we've had hot dinners so stuck to the permanent collection. Interesting to see gaps in the Art Nouveau exhibits for items which we'd seen a couple of weeks earlier in the Smithsonian exhibition. Altogether a good museum with a wide range from Egyptian through Roman, Greek and medieval to modern. Lots of pretentious Art Deco furniture which we both really dislike.

Friday 3 November 2000

Drove down to Virginia Beach and across to the eastern shore via the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, built between 1964 and 1999 at a total cost of  $450,000,000. This is a remarkable combination of bridges and tunnels which runs for 17 miles across the bay, constructed to shorten the 95 mile drive which was previously necessary. For a bit more info, click on the little picture ...

Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel

We stopped for lunch at a restaurant located at the far end of the first bridge, about three miles out into the bay.

Top tip #8: If you see soft-shelled crab sandwich on a menu, avoid it like the plague. Christine orderedone, not unreasonably expecting a sandwich with some dressed crab meat in it. What actually arrived was a complete crab, deep fried, between two halves of a hamburger bun; a soft-shelled crab is in fact an ordinary one which has just moulted and is between shells. It has a texture like fried plastic cup and blotting paper with a vaguely fishy flavour.

Saturday 4 November 2000

E-mail, web site, cooking and washing day. The camp site, which had been nearly empty, suddenly filled up almost to capacity with a weekend rally of a US Armed Forces travel club; quite a shock.

Sunday 5 November 2000

Visit to the Yorktown Victory Centre, to learn all about the Revolutionary War (or American War of Independence if you're British). The real cause was that, after protecting the colonists from the dastardly French during the Seven Year's War (1756 - 1763), the ungrateful wretches objected to a few minor taxes which we imposed to recoup the enormous costs of saving their miserable hides. The American take on it is somewhat different; they claim that the taxes were punitive, their westward colonisation was curbed unnecessarily, and that they were like children trying to break free of their parents, but then they would say that, wouldn't they?

Interesting info #7: In Chesapeake Bay there are a few islands (Kent Island, Deal Island etc.) which were so isolated that the Great Vowel Shift passed them by, and they still speak a form of Shakespearean English. Scholars come from all over the world to hear the old forms of pronunciation. This has nothing to do with Virginia, but we learnt it from one of the re-enactors at Yorktown so it appears here.

Monday 6 November 2000

... then on to Berkeley Plantation, which has much better gardens but buildings not so original. The first Thanksgiving took place here in 1619, and 'Taps' was written here.

We were surprised at how small they are - we were expecting huge rambling properties, but they all seem to be quite compact. I suppose the fact that they had to create all their own building materials - bricks, tiles etc. - had something to do with it.

Also saw cotton in the fields and being baled for the first time ...

... always thought it was grown only in the deep south, but apparently not.

Tuesday 7 November 2000

Sent emails, phoned home, received our mail forwarded  from Massachusetts. Then, on to our first day at Colonial Williamsburg, a one mile by half mile area of the old town lovingly restored as of about 1775 and populated by - you guessed it - wall to wall historic re-enactors. Lots of shops, businesses (a bookbinder who used to work in Hungerford, a peruke maker, a printer, a blacksmith), taverns serving contemporary recipes, orators, Martha Washington chatting to her friend, taunting and burning in effigy of Lord North ...

The authentic crab cake recipe tasted of plastic, so perhaps they hadn't got it quite right.

Interesting info #8: Until we arrived in Virginia, saying 'thank you' to someone inevitably produced the reply 'you're welcome' followed by an optional 'have a nice day'. In Virginia and all states south, however, the standard response is 'hm-hmm' with a rising inflection on the 'hmm'; this sounds to English ears like a sarcastic response to the effect of 'don't give me that bulls**t', but is in fact quite normal.

Wednesday 8 November 2000

Second day in Colonial Williamsburg as the ticket gives you two days entrance and you really need that long to see it all. Visited the Folk Art Museum on the site; lots of pictures of farm animals and stocky plain children painted face-on with minimal perspective, but a few gems amongst them.

Bought a Grand Union flag to hang outside the trailer. This was America's first flag, similar to the Stars and Stripes but with a small British flag where the stars now are. It was introduced in 1776, but lasted for less then a year when someone realised that a national flag which incorporated that of your sworn enemy was possibly not a good idea for national morale and replaced it with the familiar version.

The election is still going on, with recounts in bits of Florida.

Thursday 9 November 2000

Chatted with the chap in the next trailer, who recommended Charleston and Savannah as destinations but thought that western Virginia, where we're heading today, would be very cold as it's up in the mountains. Great. He's a rabid Republican, and believes that the delay in the election result is a vile plot by the Democrats in general and Gore (who is the spawn of the devil) in particular. Would be happy with a woman President if she were exactly like Margaret Thatcher. For some reason nearly all the people we've met in RV parks seem to be fairly right-wing; most are retired, so maybe that has something to do with it, although I'm not very well up on American demographics.

Drove west about 190 miles to new wooded site near Lynchburg. Not as cold as we'd feared, probably because it was so cloudy and rainy. Watched TV: a program to find the smartest kid in America (no pressure there, then), and unending analysis of the election.

Friday 10 November 2000

Set off in the truck to drive along part of the Blue Ridge Parkway, a 450 mile scenic road along the Blue Ridge Mountains. Stopped off at Natural Bridge ...

... an impressive feature, which was surveyed by a young George Washington who vandalised it by carving his initials part way up. Just as well they hadn't invented aerosol paint cans by that time. It was later bought along with several hundred acres of land by Thomas Jefferson from the King for 20 shillings - probably not a true reflection of its value. It's not what you know, it's who you know.

The weather was still cloudy but intermittently sunny, so we got some good views during our drive along the Blue Ridge. It would be great to drive the whole length some day, but it's not something to be done with a trailer on the back as it consists entirely of bends and hills, there's a blanket speed limit of 45mph, and it's impossible to overtake.

On the way back to the campsite we visited the Walton's Museum at Schuyler ...

... the home of Earl Hamner and the town on which the series is based. Saw a reconstruction of John-Boy's bedroom, the still in which the 'recipe' was made, lots of photos of the cast - really exciting. Ate fried chicken supper in a cafe on the site of Ike Godsey's General Store, but he and Cora Beth weren't there.

Tomorrow we're off to a new state - North Carolina.