Wild Ride Days 7-8

The final hours of our epic adventure had arrived. Kyndra and her little one were both sick and feverish by this point so Jaden and I made the trek to Colonial Williamsburg alone. It was a perfect day for exploring Virginia! The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and children were frolicking in the lane. Actually, Jaden was the only frolicking child. Apparently children are supposed to attend school on Wednesdays in February and are not supposed to be gallivanting across the countryside with their mothers. In my defense though, we were in Williamsburg and Jaden's class had been studying Colonial America prior to our gallivanting. Anyway, Williamsburg is a fascinating place full of people in period dress doing period things like making shoes and wigs and such. The main street is even littered with piles of horse manure. How authentic. It turns out, however, that Williamsburg is not a particularly hands-on kind of place. It's more of a look-and-listen kind of place. Did you know that 6-year old boys are not look-and-listen kinds of creatures? Of all the very cool look-and-listen things to see, Jaden's favorite was the open grassy field (where he could play Star Wars) that sat between two historically significant buildings. Oh well. Live and learn. He did perk up a bit after I bought him a wooden pistol from the gift shop. He spent the rest of the outing hopping over horse poop and shooting everyone that walked by.

Oh yeah! I am SO getting me one of these!

The plan after Williamsburg was to drive the 5 miles down the road to Jamestown. I sat in the car for a good 15 minutes considering the sanity of this choice. In the end, I figured we couldn't get this close and NOT go and at least set foot in the birthplace of our country, so off we went. This was a well-rewarded choice and I am to this day kicking myself for not researching this stuff better. Had I done so, I would've known that Jamestown was much more suited to the 6-year old version of 'cool' and we would've spent the majority of our time there instead. The first part of your Jamestown experience is to explore the museum that tells the story of Virginia from pre-history through the time of settlement. That is one excellent museum. There are life size replicas of everything, they pipe 'ambience' through the speakers and there are lots of artifacts from the site. Jaden was able to see an actual hornbook used by schoolchildren of the period (something he learned about in his Colonial America study) and absolutely went into orbit…in a good way. He was so excited to have made this discovery that you'd have thought I told him he could eat ice cream for dinner for the rest of his life! So far so good, and we hadn't even made it outside to the cool stuff yet…

After the museum, you head outside to find more people in period dress doing period things, but THIS time, they all encourage you to pick things up and explore and touch and feel and ask questions and WOW! I almost lost the kid at this point…a spirited little boy is a difficult being to keep up with. At the Powhatan village, all the dwellings were open to explore and full of tools and pottery and more animal pelts than I was comfortable being close to. Jaden touched everything, laid on the beds (ick), ground some corn…I thought he might stop to do a rain dance but he saw the masts of the ships in the harbor first and zing! Off he went again. Only one of the ships was open to tour on that day (Wednesday in February when all the children are supposed to be in school learning, remember?), but J was in heaven…more tools and beds (ick again), cannons and guns, but not quite as many pelts so I felt a little more at ease. And guess what you can see from the top deck of the ship? Yes, the fort, up the hill, in the distance. Zing! The child was off the ship and half way up the path before I could shimmy out of the galley and find the gangplank (colonial age ships were not built to accommodate Amazonian women such as myself). Now, what would a little boy find in a fort that would be of interest? Beds! Of course. Thankfully he was easily distracted from the sleeping arrangements by the sound of gunfire. At the far end of the fort, some little guy in costume was demonstrating the firing of a matchlock musket that was easily twice as long as Jaden himself. Now on to the guardhouse…the glorious building where all the armor, muskets, ammunition, and medieval sticks with pointy ends are held. Yes, I know that 'sticks with pointy ends' is not the proper name but who has time for specifics with so much weaponry to behold?? Then! The woman manning the guardhouse (and yes that's funny…Affirmative Action I suppose) says to us, "Has he tried on the armor yet?" Cue the angelic harmonies and heavenly shaft of light illuminating the plate armor across the courtyard. Zing!!

We were thoroughly exhausted by the time we got back to Kyndras.  J konked out without any trouble and Kyndra and I finally sat down to watch Mamma Mia. We were thrilled to get to finally watch it with each other since the husbands had not been too keen on having to endure it with us.  You can daaaaaaance, you can ji-ive, having the time of your li-i-ife....oooooooo

The next day was loooooong again as we flew home…this time by way of Orlando and Austin. But it was uneventful and well worth it. I can't wait to go back!