September 27 & 28, 2008

Saturday 27~~~~Today we drove to the town of "Williamsburg" all excited to see the Colonial reenactment of the life of the Puritans. We went to the visitors center and got in the long line to get our tickets. The longer we waited and the more we listened to the people in line, we decided to take the shuttle tour and watch the video and go from there with the tour. The tickets to go in all the buildings was $50.00 each and that was quite spendy for 3 o'clock in the afternoon. When we rode the shuttle into Colonial Williamsburg we found several people on the shuttle had done the same as us. We first came to the court house where they had "Thomas Jefferson" talking to a crowd of Puritans about taxation without representation, that was done well, but quite boring. We went further into the square, and we came upon a few people in costume walking the streets and most of the store buildings were closed up. A horse drawn buggy came through with some ladies in it. (picture) They were going to have a man tar and feathered for a crime he had committed, that was to be at 4:30, we bought a cold drink and a snack and sat on a bench waiting to see when more people would show up. While we were waiting, we went up to one of the actors and we asked her where all the people were that were supposed to be the puritans. We told her we had read about how great this was in all the books and magazines we have seen and the town is supposed to be like stepping back in history. She told us it has been slow and they have lots of people there for the ads as they stage them for the cameras. My friend Beth went there 12 years ago and it was great, she was surprised it was so bad when we were there. It is now about 4:20, very hot and humid and the audience is getting smaller, so we walked the rest of the town and took the shuttle back to the visitors center. We were sure glad we didn't pay the $50 each to get in the 4 small store buildings that were there. That was the only thing we missed out on. So If you want to go there, check it out first to see if it has improved, from here we went to Mass in a Swedish Church and went out for our Friday night pizza and then home to watch a movie. Sunday 28~~~ We drove in a misty rain today to "Jamestown National Park. They had an archaeological dig there with lots of artifacts in the museum. The state hires private archaeologists to do the digging and a private company whose lab identifies and labels everything. (pictures) Our camera's battery died here so only a couple of pictures of the dig they have covered up for the weekend.