Historic Triangle One-Day Marathon

 After our stop in Richmond, Virginia, to see the state capitol, we continued down the highway 40 more miles to a cozy little campground near Toano. We found Colonial Pines Campground through the Passport America web site, and it's a great half-price value in a very expensive area. The sites were spacious, and those tall trees make our sizable motor home look like a toy.

But like many Passport America parks, they have limits and exceptions. This park only allows campers to stay for two nights at the half-price rate. We arrived in the afternoon, and then hiked the campground trails, played on the playground, and checked out the pool.

A two-night stay really gives you only one day of exploring in the area, and we really could have used three days. We are close to "America's Historic Triangle" and we have decided to tackle all three corners of that triangle in just one day. Hang on to your Tri-corner colonial hat, because this is going to be a fast tour! We started the morning early at the first corner--Jamestown. 

If you're like us and have forgotten your junior high American history facts, Jamestown is the first permanent English settlement in North America. It has been around since 1607. There were other groups that came later, some that came earlier and did not survive, and other groups from different countries. All the wooden parts of the fort have long ago fallen to ruin, so the picture above is a re-creation based on the historical information they have gathered. Mark is hanging out with Captain John Smith, the leader who chose this island on the James River to put up a fort and claim the area for England. 

Of 100 men and 4 boys on the three ships that sailed here from England, only 38 would survive the first year. They would only survive by trading for maize from the local Indians that were living here. One of those was Pocahontas, and Denisa is hanging out with her today.

The only structure left from that first settlement in the early 1600s, is this brick wall of the church bell tower.

A re-creation of that church has been built here on its original site. This is the church where Pocahontas married a Jamestown settler, John Rolfe, in 1614. That sounds like the Native Americans and the Jamestown settlers got along really well. But in fact, many of the original settlers were killed by the Indians. Our national park pass got us into part of this Historic Jamestown exhibit, but an additional $10 ticket to the Preservation Virginia Society allowed us to also visit the Archaearium Museum. This museum includes artifacts found at the Jamestown site, including skeletons. No pictures were allowed, but one of the skeletons included an Indian arrowhead that had been embedded in the bone and caused the settler's death. Indian attacks were common at Jamestown.

Archeologists have been busy excavating the fort site since 1994. They removed layers of dirt, and then screen it for pieces of every-day life from the 1600s. Their findings are displayed in the museum we visited.

While we walked by, one of the student archaeologist interns squealed with delight and held up a treasure from her screen.

She showed us the 400-year-old dice made of bone. It had been hiding here in the dirt under the fort since the 17th century.

Our ticket also allowed us to walk the circle where the early town spread outside of the fort. This was a bustling seaport in the 17th and 18th centuries. Only parts of a few of the brick structures are still left standing. But our favorite part of the walk was this massive tree. Denisa is standing in its shade, where it has witnessed centuries of American history.

We also drove the five-mile Jamestown Island Loop to see the woods and marshes that are preserved to look much like they were when the settlers arrived. We took a little hike out to Black Point on the island's eastern tip to see the James River.

The last section of Historic Jamestown is the Glasshouse. We had to drive a few miles from the fort, because it's smart to remove this hot fire kiln from the rest of a wooden fort. We found the re-created kiln glowing bright red, and artisans making glass the same way they did it in 1608. 

The finished glass pieces are for sale in the gift shop at reasonable prices. If we didn't live in a motor home, Denisa would have definitely made a purchase here. Mark saves a tremendous amount of money by living in a small house that jiggles down the road in a way that is not healthy for pretty breakable things.

We feel like we thoroughly explored Historic Jamestown, and we re-learned a lot that we had forgotten. But there is more that we could have done. It is a bit confusing that some of the sites have such similar names. The state of Virginia also has a living history museum called the "Jamestown Settlement" available to visitors. We just visited "Historic Jamestown," which is on the actual spot and offers actual ruins from the 1600s. It's easy to confuse that with the Jamestown Settlement, which has constructed houses and structures like they would have looked in the 1600s, and fleshes out the little town with actors dressed in period costumes. We didn't have time to do this fancier version of Jamestown, and the $18 per person admission fee convinced us that it was time to move on to the next corner of our triangle--Yorktown.

We drove 22 miles on a lovely historical road--the Colonial Parkway. We also have to adjust our historical timeline from the early 1600s in Jamestown--to 1781 for our visit in Yorktown. We are here at the Victory Monument, built to memorialize the important victory at Yorktown. 

Before we drove the battlefield road, we walked the old streets of Yorktown, where houses from the 1700s are preserved.

It's a lovely walk into colonial times, complete with some colonial-era flowers blooming.

Our walk continued to the modern beach near Yorktown. We really zoomed through the time-line when we walked out of the 18th century right into the 21st century. Knowing that the women of the 18th century wouldn't have considered exposing even an ankle at the beach, they would have shuddered to see the woman in a thong that offered to take our picture today. We had to shudder a bit ourselves.

After our walk in the area of the Yorktown national historic park visitor center, we headed out on the battlefield drive. By following the red arrows, we could weave our way around important battlefield sites of the American Revolution.

The climax of the war happened on the night of October 14, 1781, when troops stormed the English barricades called redoubts. We weren't familiar with that word, but a redoubt is a fortified temporary stronghold. The British army had built hills, that they fortified with sharp poles. Then they dug moats around the redoubt, and filled them with stickery brambles to make it harder for the enemy to climb. But they weren't expecting the after-dark attack led by Alexander Hamilton's American troops at Redoubt Ten.

There's a picture hanging in the Virginia state capitol that helped us imagine the awful hand-to-hand battle that ensued for the American Patriots to take that fortification from the British.

Meanwhile, French soldiers were helping the American cause by storming Redoubt Nine at the same time. We walked over to this second redoubt. Mark is standing atop this fortified hill where the French helped us gain our independence from England. The French navy also played a big role in this victory by holding off the British ships in the bay that were trying to deliver more soldiers and supplies to these British forces that were now trapped.

The American  Revolution had been going on for years, and England was winning most of the battles. But with the help of the French, the English army was cut off from supplies and were forced to surrender. We had a good time relearning our national history today! Our next stop in our driving tour was at Surrender Field where 8,300 English soldiers were forced to march between the U.S. and French armies and lay down their weapons.

They also had to lay down their 200 cannons and large artillery. The American arsenal just got a whole lot bigger that day. A collection of those large guns is still displayed at Surrender Field.

The cannons still bear the British logo. It was here at Yorktown that the last major battle of the American Revolution was fought and won! It was another two years before Great Britain formally recognized the independence of the United States. What a good refresher on American history we've had today! Again, we could have also visited the American Revolution Museum at Yorktown, but we obviously didn't have that much time. We are on a roll with our day of free site-seeing, and that museum would have blown that budget with its $16 per person price tag.

It is already 7:00 p.m., and we still lack one more corner in our historic triangle. So we made the 13-mile drive to Colonial Williamsburg. We were confused on the best place to park, and since the visitor center was closed by this time, we ended up walking way too far. But we finally found some of the buildings that we were looking for. 

We are now walking at Colonial Williamsburg, the largest living history museum in the world. It includes 300 buildings restored to the way they looked in the 18th century. This was the colonial capitol, so one of those restored buildings was the Governor's Palace. It was here that the first two governors of the Commonwealth of Virginia lived. These two governor's names will sound familiar--Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson. It was also used as a hospital after the Battle of Yorktown in 1781--Wow! This day is coming around full circle.

There are no cars allowed on these streets, so we are walking without worrying about the traffic.

Visitors during the day can purchase a ticket that will allow them inside the working blacksmith shop or 21 other trade shops. But those businesses are closed this evening. We were surprised to see some of the costumed citizens still working here at Colonial Williamsburg.

Our legs are tired, but we are intent on making it to the end of the street to see Virginia's first capitol building.

Williamsburg was the seat of Virginia's colonial government for 75 years, and this was the capitol building.

The sun is setting as we leave the capitol. As late as it is, we're not the only ones here at Williamsburg. A large group has assembled for the evening "Haunted Williamsburg" tour that is ready to start.

We have a long walk back to our pickup in the parking lot. On the way, we'll walk through rural Colonial Williamsburg to see the sheep in the pasture.

We got to witness the rest of the sunset as we made our drive back to our motor home at Colonial Pines Campground. Our route is hemmed in by trees, so the sunsets are smaller here in Virginia.

That was a marathon day! We walked over ten miles and drove about 100 miles! Any one of those three stops should have taken all day, but we did them all in this Historic Triangle One-Day Marathon! Would we recommend this speed of sight-seeing? Absolutely not!