The last time I visited Colonial Williamsburg I was a kid, and about all I remember was the foot-long clay pipes that men smoked in the 18th century: after smoking the tips to blackness, they broke a couple inches off the ends, till they smoked their pipes away. Well, there's a lot more to see than the pipes. There are 500 buildings restored or rebuilt to how they looked in the 1770s; at 500 buildings, it's gotta be the largest private museum in the country. And it's got a visitor's center just as huge: it's like a posh airport inside, with 12 desks where you can buy your hotel rooms and tickets, then there are two theaters where you see a film teaching what it was like to live in Williamsburg just before the Revolution. Then you walk a third of a mile, back in time, from the visitor's center to the "town," past little markers saying things like "1920--women don't have the right to vote" and then past a farm that is being built to be a working small plantation. It will be done in 2007--we got to see them marking a poplar tree for splitting into siding for a slave's house.

There are all sorts of tradespeople that will talk about what they do, or you can tour one of the homes or the governor's mansion...I ate it up. I love to see the nitty gritty of how people cooked, made things without electricity, etc., and this wasn't just one or two folks, but dozens that you could learn from. Mark enjoyed it but without my verve, and Katie liked seeing the horses and cows and playing with the 18th century dolls and toys (hmm, I don't think those stuffed animals are period but...). As her souvenier, she chose a stuffed animal (big surprise)--it's a small red cow with tiny horns. I bought myself a top used to spin wool into yarn and a book on sewing period dolls and their clothes. Here are some pictures:

Here's the blacksmith. He was making nails that day, for the folks out at the farm perhaps.

Here is the brick maker. He makes bricks in the summer and builds a kiln in the fall out of his sun-dried bricks, and fires them--a whole year's worth. After the firing, he takes down the kiln as folks buy the bricks that made it. The dark ones in the center got the hotest and are usually the strongest. You can see why there was so much color variation in those old bricks. They were also building a bonfire to make lime out of local oyster shells. Here is the start of the bonfire:

This is the main street of Colonial Williamsburg. Portions of 88 of the buildings here are from the 18th century; when the pastor realized that back in the 1920s, he begged John D. Rockefeller, who had a summer house there, to buy all the land and turn it into a museum. That is essentially what happened. We didn't tour the Rockefeller's home, but it's the only one which looks period on the outside but is set to 1930s inside, the time that they lived there. Most of the buildings had to be rebuilt or severely restored, so it's still not finished, but 500 buildings and outbuildings are done.

This is the cabinetmaking shop.

This chair was in the governor's palace in the 1700s. It was probably made in this very cabinet maker's shop! Now this is the only surviving chair (the governor fled just before the Revolution, and locals absconded with his stuff), so the current cabinetmakers are copying it, using the same kinds of 18th century tools used the first time the set was made.

Here's Mark and Katie standing in a backyard near the printing shop.

I might write more about Williamsburg, to help me remember more than just the clay pipes, but for now, that's all I'll subject everyone to. Here's a parting shot, the very pretty Colonial Parkway, which connects Williamsburg (where the American Revolution had its roots), Jamestown settlement (pre-Plymouth Rock but not pre-St. Augustine), and Yorktown, where the American Revolution ended. There is so much history that you can't run off the road without knocking down a historical marker or roadway sign. You'd have to walk to read them all--you just can't pull over that often legally. I wish we could live nearby and learn even more about it. We drove Hwy 5 leading up to Williamsburg from the west, which passes a dozen 17th and 18th century tobacco plantations, but didn't have time to stop at any. Here's the road. I hope everyone will have a chance to see this place:

By the way, the Jamestown settlement is very cool too. It's a new museum and recreation of the settlement itself, as well as the Powhatan (sp?) Indian village adjacent to the settlement. You wander from the visitor's center--which has a movie about the life and times here in the early 1600s (times were rough, most people died) and gorgeous rooms filled with historical artifacts--down to the Indian settlement, and then either into the fort or to the boats, three exact replicas of the ones used to sail here from England. The boats were the coolest part: you could go below deck on the biggest one, winch the anchor winch on the smallest one, and talk to the folks who know how to sail these things. Here are the pictures:


Katie scraping a deerhide with an oyster shell (it was hard to get the hairs off, but she tried and tried. Notice the shell on Red Bear's head). A minute later, a bigger boy came up and pushed her out of the way to do it himself. I had to refrain from giving him a little piece of my mind.

Katie winching up the anchor (none of my help was allowed)

They were making a cedar canoe by burning out the log. It takes two weeks for one person to do it, or "one party" for a bunch of people with enough beer and food.

Mark didn't get to see the Jamestown boats and the fort, because he was getting laundry done after we had a mishap in the bathroom (an overflow of the potty which took many many towels to clean up). He would have liked it very much.