Hi friends! It’s been awhile since we’ve discussed travels. In February of last year, I decided to take advantage of the booming real estate market in Tennessee and sell my house. I had been hoping to move closer to work anyway, so the timing felt right. My parents were kind enough to play along and offered to let me stay with them until I found a place. That took a while, because the downside to a booming market is that everyone is looking for a house. I am now finally in my new house, so I have a little time to tell you about a trip we took to Virginia.
We lost my grandfather (my dad’s dad) in April of last year to Parkinson’s. My grandmother (my mom’s mom) was also suffering from Parkinson’s, and we knew we were going to lose her soon, as we did in December. Caring for them, alongside other family members and medical staff, was difficult for all, and in July, we needed a short break.
We decided to take a roadtrip, and my instinct is often for Virginia, so that’s where we headed. We left late in the afternoon after I got off work on a Friday. Our plan was to stay the night in Lexington, VA, which was a good stopping point for us on our journey, as it is not too far over into Virginia. We drove through Knoxville, hitting rush hour traffic, and if memory serves, we made a Burger King stop to ride it out.
Thus questionably nourished, we got back on the road. The moment you cross into Virginia, things start to look different. The rest stops look colonial. Even in the furthest western portions of the state, there is a devotion to history, as well as a natural abundance of history. You see old houses off the interstate and pamphlets on everything from the Revolutionary War to the Civil War. We pressed on late into the night.
We love a good Hampton Inn on our roadtrips, and the plan was to stay at the historic one in Lexington, which my mom had booked. It is the most amazing (affordable) hotel! It has new rooms, but it also is attached to the historic Col Alto Mansion and has seven acres of grounds. We arrived there at eleven o’clock in the pitch black. The registration part is in the old mansion, and we were immediately bummed that we would be here a total of seven hours. Still, though, it was a nice way to start the trip. The lady behind the desk said, “You want to stay in the historical part?” We did, so she directed us up the old staircase and handed us big keys.
Our rooms had all of the modern conveniences but tons of historical grandeur. In the morning, the continental breakfast was served in an old room, with the option to sit on the veranda (we didn’t, because it was steamy). We headed out pretty early, though, because we had tickets at Monticello in Charlottesville for a 9:45 tour.
As I have noted here, my mom and I had been to the home of Thomas Jefferson before, but my dad never had, so we decided it was a must. You go up the mountain, park, pay, then ride the shuttle farther up the mountain until finally, you are near the house. We had a few minutes, so we walked around the property and enjoyed the view.
We had a great tour guide, and, with it being summer, there were loads of people there. But as I noted from our previous trip there, Monticello staff run the visitor site like a well-oiled machine. On our way down the mountain in the shuttle, you have the option of getting off at Jefferson’s grave.
This is not usually my sort of jam, but since I had finished Secrets of an Old Virginia House, and since the book featured a scene at Jefferson’s grave, I thought it might not be a bad idea to make sure that what is searchable about the site online was not significantly different from the in-person experience. It was totally different, a fact about online material which is good for writers to note. Even reputable sites had the epitaph as well as the placement of the graves wrong because they were changed, something I note in the Author’s Note of the book.
It was about this time that I realized the trip was becoming something of a research trip during the final editing process of the book, something we all embraced cheerfully.
After we left, we went to our favorite restaurant in the area, Michie Tavern, which I also discussed here previously. Again, my dad had not been, but he was similarly impressed. I bought a T-shirt at the gift shop, which I thought was just gray with the restaurant logo on it, but I realized as the cashier was folding it that it had a cute scene with eighteenth century-dressed men and women on the back, drinking, with the words, “While all men are created equally, all spirits are not.” My mom and I, laughing, were stopped on the way out by an elderly employee, who told us she loved the shirt. We told her that while it was cute, I just could not wear it to church, something she didn’t seem to quite understand, which told me that the area must not be quite as Evangelical-heavy as my own.
Then it was back on the road! We had a 3:00 tour at Montpelier, the home of James Madison. I have something on my agenda that says, “Do not take Chicken Mountain Road.” I have no recollection of this, but that might be something you want to note. It sounds ominous.
Montpelier is in Orange, VA, and by the time you get there, the terrain looks a little different, less mountainous, more prosperous for farming. Madison came from a wealthier family than Jefferson, so everything felt a bit differently. For one, the house, being older, was my first experience of a house that was similar in architectural style to the one I had depicted in Secrets. It is rectangular, and as you walk in, there is immediately a long hall. We would see this style repeated on the trip. It is a design style that, while large and, to our eyes, grand, was intended by builders during colonial times to make the best usage of square footage.
Again, we had a good tour. The guide made an off-handed comment that, if you were a lesser-known visitor, you would stay in one part of the house, while if you were Andrew Jackson, for instance, you would stay in the nicer rooms. Being from Tennessee (home state of Jackson), my dad and I had discussed on several occasions the interesting interactions between Jackson and the Virginia elites like Jefferson and Madison, who were a generation older. Jackson, seen as a common frontiersman, sometimes made them nervous. We have also suspected that they slightly looked down on him as well, so the thought of Jackson staying at the home of Madison was intriguing.
At the end, the guide asked if there were any questions, and I asked if Jackson had indeed stayed there. He said that he had ridden there on horseback from Washington to ask Madison’s opinion on a thorny constitutional matter because he wanted to get it right. How convenient that would be, to ask the author. He too believed that Madison was a tad nervous of Jackson.
Following the tour, we had supper in Orange and then went to a B & B we had found called Mayhurst Inn. The inn is run by a couple with several children. The historic home was absolutely beautiful, and they had goats, which were very cute. My room was beautiful with high ceilings, great Magnolia wallpaper, and a relaxing environment. It was so peaceful there. In the morning, we were served peach French toast and maple bacon. We had been dieting, so this was absolute heaven. We loved the peach French toast so much that we tried it at Christmastime with the larger family (we didn’t get it quite right, but maybe next year).
From there, we headed toward Fredericksburg, which I had wanted to visit since researching it back in college. On the way, there were many battlefields (The Wilderness, Manassas, Chancellorsville). We drove through them. As battlefields go, these were just okay. They were carefully preserved so that they were basically just woods. The thing that struck me while there was just how vast the fighting grounds of these battlefields were, and how wooded some of them. It always seemed like a nightmare while reading about them, and that was more or less confirmed.
Fredericksburg was a neat town. The first thing we did was totally free: Chatham House. We walked through the house and grounds. It is in the restoration process and is not set up like a typical historic house tour. Still, since it happened to have that same architecture as the house from my book, this actually worked out for the best. With a less guided tour, you have the freedom to explore, stand, and get a feeling for how the house flows. The grounds were beautiful, overlooking the Rappahannock River. I was able to get a feeling for what it must have been like when the town was just a small village and trade was done on the river, right up to the grounds of the house. There was also a fabulous old tree on the property. This ended up being one of our favorite stops.
We also toured Kenmore, the home of George Washington’s sister. They had a replica of Fredericksburg during colonial times that was so revealing as to getting a feel for the city structure. We dashed in out of the rain and then were taken from the visitor center to the house (partially in a tunnel, I believe I remember). One of the rooms had the most exquisite moldings on the ceiling that I have ever seen, with a theme for each season in the four corners. The tour was worth it to see the ceiling alone.
We had left another day open on our agenda, thinking that Fredericksburg would be jam-packed with stuff to do, historically speaking. For all of its importance and interest, we didn’t see spending another day there, because, while the history is deep, its presentation is not. Therefore, we set out for Colonial Williamsburg.
My mom and I had been before, as I detailed here. We arrived late in the evening and got up the next day to tour the park. We got on the bus, where the voice on the speaker is British (remember, it’s set in colonial times, so it feels a little odd). I jokingly referred to the voice as oppressive. But it is neat to get yourself in that headspace – the king is the king, and the royal governor is in charge.
We ate at the King’s Arms, which is always a great experience. Mostly, though, I love the shopping, since I enjoy primitive and colonial-inspired things. I got orange slice garlands and hand-sewn colonial people ornaments for my Christmas tree. My parents have four grandkids and got two bonnets for the girls, a tricorn hat for one of the boys, and a squirrel wearing a tricorn hat for the baby boy.
One thing that I loved about Colonial Williamsburg was the other people visiting. That feels so strange to say about what is, at the end of the day, an amusement park. But everyone was so kind, so genuinely understanding that everyone was there to enjoy themselves on vacation. My mom accidentally left a tote bag with the grandkids’ presents on a bus at one of our stops and was upset, thinking she had lost it. I said, “Don’t worry. That’s not the vibe here. We’ll get it back.” I called the guest desk, was put on hold, and about three minutes later, they came back and said they had found it, and we could stop at the desk to pick it up on the way out. This was all about eight minutes after we had lost it. Someone had taken it to the driver, who had already returned it to the desk for us. So, my point is – it is a great place to take a family, especially if you have kids.
On the way back home, we made two stops. The first was at Appomattox, since the last time I had been through, there had been a government shutdown and the gates were closed. I have always found the final scene between Grant and Lee moving, so it was nice to see the room where it happened.
We also stopped at Thomas Jefferson’s vacation home, Poplar Forest. It is a mini-Monticello, so it made sense to come full circle. The house is under renovation, but it was actually very interesting to see the guts of the house, if you will (inside the walls and in the tunnels). The cite also felt pertinent in an indefinable way to the book I was about to finalize. You’ll probably understand why if you’ve read it.
Thanks for taking this trip to Virginia with me. It’s always a historical adventure.
Tara Cowan 