Williamsburg, Jamestown and fried green tomatoes.

"After leaving the Outer Banks we headed to Williamsburgh. We went into the town to see what it was all about. At first it felt a bit like being on a Disney set. The houses are perfect, the streets wide and tree lined. It is described as a restoration and re construction of 17th centuary Williamsburgh and acts as a living history museum. While it was all very nice, and the costumed ladies were lovely, ( I forgot to take any photos ) I much preferred the Historic Jamestowne site. This is the actual site of the Jamestown fort. We had a walk with an archaeologist who explained some of the features they have found so far. And then later a talk with a National Park Ranger who had a different slant on the site. To be fair if you saw the story of the settlement in a tv show, you wouldn't believe it. There is mutiny, greed, starvation, bizarre coincidences and canabalism oh and Pocahontas as well. You can read about it here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamestown,_Virginia

It was also strange to go into the shop and to see pipes made by a good friend for sale there! 

Finally, those fried green tomatoes. We stopped off in a cafe in a settlement called Charles City. I have looked it up since we visited, and the city has a population of 133. You can't fault the food at the cafe though http://culscourthousegrille.com/ . When I saw fried green tomatoes on the menu, I couldn't resist, and they were lovely. 

We have had a wonderful trip and 2 days was not long enough in Virginia, we will hopefully be back again soon. Bye y'all. 

Goodbye to the Outer Banks

Rather than sit in traffic as the weekend changeover means everyone is trying to leave and get onto the island by the only 2 routes available, we went to see where the Wright brothers made the first powered flight. Something they do very well here is the national park service. Any park we have been to you can go to talk given by a ranger and they are always entertaining. Ranger Chelsea was even more entertaining than most. To say she was passionate about the Wright bros would be an understatement. The brothers were from Dayton Ohio, and went to the town of Kittyhawk because they had been told there was wind, sand on which to land and privacy as the place was not very populated in the 1900s. They eventually managed 4 powered flights . 

The first flight took 10 seconds and went from where I was standing to the first stone, the second attempt to the second and the third...well you guessed it. The fourth attempt by Wilbur went much further, to the tree line. When the brothers were there, there were no trees, it was all sand. What blew my mind was the fact that just 66 years after that first flight, a man walked on the moon, and Neil Armstrong had a small piece of the Kittyhawk in his pocket as he walked on the moon. 

The Kittyhawk ( replica ) 

On the way up to Williamsburg we went a half mile off the beaten track and had lunch in a waterfront cafe which was just what you imagine a southern eatery to be, a friendly waitress , good food and both types of music, country and western. It was wonderful. 

Wild horses

It wasn't until we got to the Outer Banks that I found out that one of their unique points is the wild horses that live on the northern end of the islands. They are direct descendants of the horses brought over by the Spanish and are genetically unique. Of course we had to go on a tour to see them. We knew the only way to get up to where they live is in a 4X4 as where they are, is only accessible by driving down the beach, which is bizarrely officially an unpaved highway. 

We set off in our hummer which sat 13 plus the driver. It was fun speeding along the beach, there were more trucks and SUVs parked in the middle of the beach with families having fun on the beach. 

A selfi mirror! 

I had expected to see horses wandering through the dunes, what I didn't expect was a lot of houses out in the "wilds". This in a nutshell is what is wrong with the Outer Banks in my opinion, it is over developed. While it is a long strip of land, in places it is very narrow. You can literally be driving along the highway and out one side of the car see the ocean and out the other see the Sound. 

Back to the horses, we saw a group of four almost straight away, munching grass in someone's front garden. It is against the law to feed or get closer than 50 feet to them, so they are fearless of humans. There are only 110 or so left when there were hundreds only a centuary ago. But the numbers are slowly rising. 

We drove around for a while and spotted another stallion in another front garden. On the way back we found another walking along the beach. They are small, but they are horses not ponies. It was lovely to see them, but sad that their small bit of habitat is being developed, and the number of sites for sale was depressing. You can read more about them here http://www.ncwildhorses.com/

The History Bit

This is the Elizabeth II. She is a replica of the ship the Elizabeth, that brought the colonists to Roanoake Island in 1587. It is hard to imagine how anyone would trust their lives to a 69 ft boat to sail the Atlantic into the unknown to colonise a place they knew nothing much about. But that is what 115 people did. Sir Walter Raleigh had a charter from Queen Bess which gave him control of the East Coast of the New World on the proviso he settled it as well. So he set up a relocation company and convinced a group of farmers and tradesmen to head off for a better life in the Americas. They weren't just dumped there, a survey party had been there a few years before, and a second expedition left carpenters and blacksmiths there to construct a village for the settlers. They chose Roanoake island. At first there was good relations with the local tribes, predictably this didn't last. 

Anyway, the colonists were left at the settlement and pretty much told to get on with it, but their leader returned to England to ask for more support and supplies. He was supposed to be gone for 9 months, but weather, politics and the Spanish Armada got in the way so it was 3 years before he returned. All there was left of the settlement was a post with the word Croatoan. The colonists seem to have packed up and gone. Even the houses had been dismantled and taken with them. It was suspected they had moved south to another island called Croatoan island. But a storm was coming and the crew refused to go looking for the colonists. It seemed that the fates were against them being found as for one reason or another no serious search was made for the "Lost Colony". Current thinking is that as there was the worst drought in 800 years during the time the colonists arrived, they may have been forced to leave due to that. It is possible they then integrated into the local indigenous population, as it was noted some years later that some of the native people had grey eyes, which was very unusual. 

All this we learnt by visiting the Roanoake Island festival park. http://www.roanokeisland.com/  

Sight seeing around Nags Head

We haven't been out and about all that much, two reasons why; this is primarily a water based holiday and the weather. The weather has been a bit tempremental. The mornings have been generally fine, hot, humid and overcast. In the afternoon the mother and father of all thunderstorms, along with his brothers and sisters have been passing through. That has curtailed our outings a bit. But we have managed to see a few things.

Thundercloud over the bay.

The first was the Elizabethan Garden. It is a lovely wooded garden with some knot beds on the bank of the Sound. It had a lovely walk laid out and it was pleasant and cool. There is a very large statue of Queen Elizabeth I but it reminded me of the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland. There were lots of plants I had no idea what they were as well as roses and a lot of hosta. 

Elizabethan garden. 

We also took the boys to see the lighthouse on Bodie ( pronounced body ) Island. The Labrador current with its cold water runs south past the banks to meet the Gulf Stream which causes the build up of sandbanks which change all the time. There are hundreds of shipwrecks along this coast. The lighthouse is a beacon to tell ships to go out to sea to avoid the sandbanks. It is a lovely building painted with black and white stripes. They only allow 8 people to climb it every half hour. This is because it has a "floating" staircase, it isn't attached to the wall, but to each landing. We didn't climb it. There were no tickets available and the heat index ( like the wind chill factor, only in reverse ) made the temperature inside 100 f. I can't say I was too disappointed. The boys were though, as there was something called a Pokemon gym at the top!

A floating staircase. 

The house...wow

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I love looking around other people's houses. This one is quite special. It is a four bed house with views over the bay. Nice, I hear you say, but what that doesn't tell you is the size of the place,  5,600sq ft. You come in on the basement level, there is a garage with a ping pong table, behind that is a games room with a huge tv, pool table and various easy chairs. You can then take a lift ( yes it has its own lift ) to the first floor which has the front door and the bedrooms. There is also a wrap around porch with views over the swimming pool. The bedrooms are each en suite, there are also two other rooms, which for zoning reasons can't be described as bedrooms, but, hey, the seats are OK to sleep on. 

Upstairs is the living area. It is an open plan kitchen with dining area and living room. Again you can walk out onto the deck to relax and look at the views. It is an amazing place. There are 10 of us here but it is perfectly possible to lose all the others about the place. Oh did I mention the dock? The boys have been fishing from there.

Of course we looked the place up online to see how much we could buy it for. I'm not sure the bank manager would lend us the $1.6 million though. 

Living room

Part of the view.