Williamsburg and Annapolis

April 17 through 20, 2000

Linda has commented to me that I am sometimes putting too much emphasis on the weather, but that is in some parts the major determination of what we are doing on this trip. When we started from Washington to Williamsburg on Monday morning, the weather was dreary and wet. By the time we got to Williamsburg, we had gone through the hardest rain that I have ever experienced. Every time I thought that the rain had gotten as bad as it could get, it got worse. On the up side, we missed the hail that was reported in the area. At least one of the reports included hail that was and inch and three quarters diameter. The areas that we went through were reported to have had three and four inches of rain in twenty four hours – most of which, I suspect, fell in the few hours that we were on the road.

Severe weather warnings and driving rain kept us in a motel for Monday night. Even at that, when we went to bed, we went to sleep to the accompaniment of a constant roll of thunder for about an hour. Only a few of the claps were close enough to cause us to take notice. The weather on Tuesday was supposed to be improving. I guess that it was better in that there was no driving rain. Instead, it was just cold and wet. All day long, the high only got to 53 degrees, and there was a very light mist that just made everything wet. It was the kind of mist that doesn’t really fall, but does form droplets on your glasses that it are hard to see through.

Despite the weather, we did a volkswalk through the colonial part of Williamsburg and through the College of William and Mary. It was a nice walk, but again, it was adversely affected by the weather.

On Wednesday, April 19 (a date significant for some in my family), it was still cold, although not raining. We got tickets to do the tourism thing at Williamsburg. Fortunately for us, we started with the Governor’s Palace, and ended by going out to Carter’s Grove Plantation, so we got a couple of good events on either end, but basically, we were disappointed with Williamsburg. Linda was there almost 20 years ago, and she remembers it as a very enjoyable experience.

At the Governor’s Palace, we started by hearing a speech by Thomas Jefferson. The date that was created for us was April 25, 1775 – the Virginians had not yet heard of the conflicts that had started in Massachusetts the week before, and they were addressing some of their own grievances – primarily the confiscation of the powder in the town magazine by the Kings governor. Jefferson’s speech was very well done, and also interesting. After listening to that, we took a tour of the Palace itself. The original palace burned down late in the Revolutionary War, but the reconstruction and furnishing was all based on contemporary descriptions. We especially liked the colors in the rooms. The ballroom had a blue color that was quite vibrant.

Late in the day we toured the Carter’s Grove Plantation. This plantation home had what the architect called a “restoration plus” performed on it in the early 1930’s. The family that bought the house then did a restoration job where it made sense, and added modern conveniences where they were needed. The areas between the house and the two outbuildings – the kitchen and the laundry – were enclosed and called “hyphens.” These hyphens included some of the modern conveniences such as bathrooms. The result of all of this work was a very elegant old home that looked like it could be lived in with great comfort.

Between the palace and the plantation, very large crowds and very unfriendly personnel frustrated us. It didn’t help that we happened to be there on spring break week for most of the kids in the Washington area schools. There were several huge tour groups of school age kids, many with only minimal adult supervision. When we went to get lunch, we forsook a decent sit down restaurant for fast food because we would have faced with a two-hour wait. In the mean time, most of the staff that we encountered seemed to be surly. It didn’t help that the weather was pretty vile most of the time that we were there. All told, we figured that we had had enough.

After leaving Williamsburg on Wednesday afternoon, we drove across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel. Ever since that opened, I have wanted to cross it. It really is an interesting piece of engineering. There are two sections that are causeways, two sections that are tunnels, and one that is a high span. The only problem is that a car with a lot of side area on a windy day makes the ride a little hairy.