2009 Vacation – Yorktown, Baltimore, and Home

Towards the end of our vacation we decided to go to Yorktown, where the British surrendered to the Americans at the end of the Revolutionary War. Yorktown was also the site of action during the Civil War as well. One of the reasons we decided to go to Yorktown is that our National Parks pass we bought earlier in the week for Jamestown was also good at Yorktown. We checked out the Visitors Center and then walked around looking at various captured cannons and other artillery. I really enjoyed the fancy castings and inscriptions on the cannons. My favorite was a captured British mortar with a Latin inscription that translated roughly as “I bring not the rays of the sun but the thunderbolts of Jupiter”.

A Yorktown Cannon
A Yorktown Cannon

After checking out the Yorktown Visitors Center we decided to check out historic Yorktown’s town center. We enjoyed walking around the town – the weather was nice and the kids were good and we were generally having a good time. We took pictures of the kids at the Yorktown victory monument and even found a cannon ball embedded into the wall of a Yorktown house. The cannon ball likely came from a French ship that blockaded Yorktown and cut off any British retreat to the sea.

Yorktown Victory Monument
Yorktown Victory Monument
Kids at the Yorktown Victory Monument
Kids at the Yorktown Victory Monument
A ball in the wall
A ball in the wall

Everything was going well until Diana peed her pants. This was a major annoyance as all the kids are generally well past the “accident” stage and we hadn’t come prepared with extra clothes or underwear. Diana’s accident cut short the walking part of our Yorktown tour but luckily for us there was a driving tour that you could go on as well. We made Diana sit in the back of the car on a towel and struck off for the driving tour which covered both the revolutionary and civil war battlegrounds. We stopped at every information point along the tour and carefully read all the signs. It was beautiful weather and I enjoyed the driving tour through the woods and countryside as much as anything we did the whole vacation.

The next day was our final day of vacation so we headed to Baltimore to turn in the rental car and visit Nancy’s Aunt Joyce. We had lunch with Aunt Joyce and went to their little farm and played with the Shetland ponies that Joyce keeps as a hobby. Unfortunately, it was raining all day long and nobody thought to get the camera out of the car in the rain. On Saturday, we flew from Richmond, VA to Boise, ID via O’Hare without incident and then made the 5 hour drive home from Boise.

All in all, it was a fun vacation even though the airline problems got us started on the wrong foot at the beginning. That being said, now that I’ve taken my family to Washington D.C./Baltimore/Williamsburg/Jamestown/Yorktown once in their life, I have very little desire to return again in my life.

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