Vacay

 It was another week of my family vacation. We decided that this would be my graduation gift for getting my master's last year. I debated whether I wanted something more personal, like a trip that my parents didn't pick, but if I kept waiting for something else to cash in on, suddenly five years would have passed, and it wouldn't seem relevant anymore.

Now, sometimes I get bored with people's vacation posts. So I hope that by injecting silly, frivolous comments with the more pertinent details of the trip, this post will be more entertaining.

When we weren't being tourists, it was fun to hang out at the condo in Williamsburg, Virginia, which was located on Olde Towne Road, a name that would have been more topical in 2019.

Part of the purpose of this trip was for my parents to go to Delaware, the fiftieth state they visited together. So Monday we took a drive up to Delaware. Our visit wasn't that exciting; it was mostly to check it off the list. We went to Bethany Beach, which was lovely, but it was chilly, so we didn't want to stay too long. 

I'm not sure why I took this picture of myself

On our way back, we drove onto an island called Chincoteague, but we didn't do anything in the quaint town. Which meant we didn't see the community theater's performance of Gilligan's Island: The Musical.

On Tuesday, we headed to Mount Vernon, Virginia, the land of George Washington. While at Mount Vernon, I realized that often I'm more interested in how things are remembered than I am in what actually happened. I'm less fascinated by Washington's life and more fascinated that people felt a need to turn his home into a tourist spot and celebrate his birthday. They had a memorial at his tomb, but they also had a memorial for his slaves. There was one marker from 1929 that was "in memory of the many faithful colored servants of the Washington family." Besides the obvious rhetorical device of referring to slaves as "colored servants," this marker shows that it was still all about Washington. That kind of thing is interesting to me.

We toured Washington's mansion, but they herded us through like cattle. It was kind of weird.

There were a few museum exhibits, and I was more interested in the exhibits that had relics from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries showing how Washington was venerated. They also had this amusing painting from the 1930s that lampooned the apocryphal story of young George chopping down the cherry tree. I was kind of surprised to see them making fun of that story back in the 30s, because I can remember learning it in school in the 1990s. 

We ate at the restaurant there at Mount Vernon, where I had chicken and waffles, a rather unwieldy dish.

I enjoy visiting random stores, and that night we visited Ollie's, which is apparently an East Coast chain. It's something like a cross between Big Lots! and C-A-L Ranch. They had weird promotional signs throught the store, and I overheard a kid, probably around seven, telling his Mom about a sign with a dead guy on it.

Mom: I don't think he's dead.

Kid: But he has x's for eyes! That means he's dead!

Mom: Fair point.

So I looked up, and the kid was right, he did look dead. I'm not sure what the store was going for with this sign.

On Wednesday, we went to Jamestown Settlement, which had exhibits about the Jamestown settlement of 1607 but also a living history museum with costumed interpreters. They also had replica ships, which were cool to see.

A monument from 1957

But I was more interested in Historic Jamestowne, which was the site of the original Jamestown. There were lots of layers of history here: original seventeenth-century building foundations, Civil War ridges, and twentieth and twenty-first century monuments. 

Foundations of early seventeenth-century church

I think one wall of the church tower is original, but the rest is a reconstruction

1907 statue of John Smith

2007 model of James Fort

Excavation of Civil War ridge

In 1994, which wasn't that long ago, they began an archaeological dig at the site of Jamestown. They had many old wells and other sites. There was also a museum dedicated to their archaelogical finds, including two mostly complete skeletons. They also unearthed a spot of lots of animal bones, which indicates a place where they discarded the inedible portions of their food. But interestingly (and disturbingly), they also found a skull and a partial bone of a fourteen-year-old girl with cut marks on them, indicating that they resorted to cannibalism during difficult times.

I think Historic Jamestowne was my favorite site.

Early Thursday morning, we boarded a tour bus to head up to Washington DC as part of a tour group. My family visited DC when I was six and eight, so it's been a while. 

Our first major stop was Arlington National Cemetery, where we looked around a couple of hours. If it had been up to me, I wouldn't have spent that much time there, but we didn't pick the itinerary.

We saw John F. Kennedy's eternal flame, and I remembered that the family scrapbook from our 1995 trip had a picture of me touching the post gingerly, as though it were hot. I wanted to recreate the picture, but I didn't quite remember what the original looked like.

Then we went and made a stop at the Lincoln Memorial, which is always fun to see, and the Korean War Memorial.

We had a couple of hours to see the Smithsonian museums, so we picked the National Museum of American History, which we visited when I was six and eight. We looked at exhibits about food and entertainment. (I wasn't at all interested in the exhibit about first ladies' dresses, so it's not worth mentioning.) They used to have the original Star-Spangled Banner hanging in the front of the museum (well, at least a replica of it), but now they only have this artwork, and you have to go behind the wall to see the original flag (which I did). 

Last week I mentioned that I was amused that my dad bookmarked "potato chips health benefits," so we were also amused to see these potato chips branded as "a healthy food."

We also drove past the Capitol, the National Archives, the White House, the Washington Monument, and a few other places before going back to Williamsburg. It was a long day.

On Friday, we visited Colonial Williamsburg, which had various historic sites with costumed interpreters. All these sites, but especially Williamsburg, made me feel bad for This Is the Place, which has a lack of funding and a lack of professionals, so it's not as nice. For example, the print shop actually prints things they typeset themselves, things you can actually read. And the shoemakers actually make eighteenth-century shoes for the employees. TITP was a fun place to work, but I'm glad I don't work there anymore.

A lot of the gravel was made of shells, which was cool.

Printing presses

Then Saturday morning, we got up early. My parents dropped me, my sister, and my niece off at the airport before they continued their road trip. Our second flight was delayed due to rain, and we had to sit on the plane for a long time before it took off. Because of the delay, I was able to watch three full holiday movies I hadn't seen before: A Christmas Story Christmas (7/10), Easter Sunday (2/10), and Batman Returns (8/10). 

It was a good trip, but I'm glad to be back home with Reggie.