Williamsburg and Beyond

My history loving husband was extremely excited to take this trip up to Williamsburg, Yorktown, and Jamestown. I went with my 8th grade class quite a long time ago and while I remembered quite a bit, I was definitely excited to re-experience it!

This is the Governor's Palace in Williamsburg. If you have never been to Williamsburg, you should definitely go. They have a huge long block of buildings, most of which are original, and they give you tours through the old houses, they have cast members dressed up in colonial clothes, and they basically make you feel like you are living during that time period. It really makes history come alive!

These replica ships are found in Jamestown and are extremely similar to the original ones that the colonists sailed over from England in. It's amazing how small they were.

This is inside the Jamestown fort. They have a replica of all of the buildings inside of the fort and are as accurate as possible due to the writings of people during that time frame. They also have cast members dressed up and give informative speeches about what might have happened during that time period.

This is a street view of Williamsburg, my pictures are all out of order, these places are pretty close together but they are not within walking distance.

This is at Yorktown and these logs coming out of the ground are called Redoubts. These redoubts were used to keep the enemy from getting up the hill and onto their side.

We decided to take a walk through the Battlefield area, only to discover that the locations are not close together and it would have been better to take a "driving" tour. We enjoy walking and that wasn't a big deal until it suddenly started to rain, and then proceeded to pour! We had prepared for a little bit of rain and brought umbrellas and rain jackets, but pretty soon the rain was coming through the umbrella! It was beautiful regardless!

In Yorktown there is a replica of the encampment and this would have been one of the general's tents. We were able to walk around and explore all the tents, food preparation places, and even saw a rifle demonstration!

At the rifle demonstration they explained that the rifles don't always fire and that we may or may not get to see it. She tried four or five times to shoot it and it failed every time until this last time when they both came out to shoot and both rifles went off. They told us that this was typical of rifles back in those days....how scary it would have been to have a gun, shooting at your enemy, and not even be confident that it was going to go off!

We're back in Williamsburg now and these are some pictures from the Randall house, he was a friend of Jefferson and it is estimated that Thomas Jefferson actually spent some significant amount of time here.

The dining room was painted green, which I liked because it was calming, but the tour guide actually explained that they painted it green because it helped to create a serene eating environment.

This is in the backyard of the Governor's Palace, the tulips had just bloomed and it was beautiful.

Inside the magazine (where they kept all the gun powder and weapons)

The stocks! We had fun taking pictures in these, but when they were used for real, they actually nailed the right earlobe to the wood for one hour and the left earlobe for another hour. Ouch!

Baby lamb

We went to Jamestown and this is the Pocahontas statue

Part of the Jamestown area 

I love these trees, they are so beautiful!

We had an awesome trip at Williamsburg, Jamestown, and Yorktown and it was not only packed full of such history, it was also beautiful. The gardens, the trees, the landscape (all natural) was simply beautiful! We are so thankful to live close enough to be able to explore part of the early history of America!