Monday, March 20th

Monticello, Richmond, and Virginia Beach

This morning we left Fairfax, Virginia to head into Washington, D.C. just long enough to get our rental van and head south.  We met Jeff and Gina and their children mid-morning at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home.  The house is so well preserved you can almost imagine Mr. Jefferson stepping through the parlor doors to greet you.  We had a terrific guide, extremely animated, and ready and able to answer all of the children's questions.  We finished the official house tour and then wandered the grounds and ended by visiting Jefferson's grave.   The site is still owned and maintained by Jefferson's descendants.

But of course, the highlight was meeting Bob McGrath of Sesame Street fame!  Hanna was the one the locked on to him as someone familiar and famous.  Once we figured out he wasn't "someone religious" we placed him as the human from Sesame Street.  He was very nice and we chatted for quite a while.

From Monticello, we said good bye to Jeff and Gina and headed back south and east to Richmond.  The state capital, designed by Jefferson, was still under construction but we knew this and set out to get the walking tour.  Our guide was a lovely lady who seemed to enjoy talking our leg off.  We learned a lot about Virginian and Colonial times, a lot about local politics and current legislative issues, and a lot about her grandkids.  I think she would have gone home with us but after getting voluminous amounts of interesting and helpful information we had to excuse ourselves and move on.

Before leaving we stopped at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, adjacent to the Capitol complex. This is the church where both Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis had rented pews still marked to this day.  Click on the small picture to see the beautiful Tiffany windows in more detail.

From there is was further south and further east to Norfolk with it's huge naval base and Langley Air force base, and then Virginia Beach were we all saw the Atlantic Ocean for the very first time.  We have first class accommodations tonight since this is still the off-season and we intend to take full advantage of them.  Tomorrow we start north again for a day at Williamsburg.