01 October 2003 19:49
good afternoon. so apparently the quote i got from PMMA (the mennonite insurance agency) turned out to be inaccurate, as they had not looked at my driving record. now that they've gotten a good look at my rap sheet, turns out they're in the same range as the little gecko guy. {sigh}. maybe i'll just sell my car.we went to williamsburg this summer. since the whole family was together in kansas after my graduation, we kind of had two small vacations instead of our normal large one. dad k and i headed down on wednesday to take in some museums along the way (the army transportation museum being one, the virginia air and space another. at the air and space we had the oppurtunity to watch the matrix reloaded on imax for $7.50. too bad the movie wasn't worth it. i've never had the chance to see a hollywood production in imax. a couple of guys from school and i tried to find one in houston showing attack of the clones last fall, but it turned out that the nearest one to there was in galveston, which was a little bit farther down the road than we had time to go that day (an hour is normally no sweat, we drove five hours round trip to watch one of star wars or lotr movies in dallas one time. but we only had a couple free hours in houston, which was already three hours from school anyway. anywayze, this is a little off topic)). then we met up with mom and s at the motel before going out for supper.
we ate packed lunches each day and then went out to eat for supper. going out to eat five days in a row was just a bit much. i wasn't used to eating much all summer, so now i was still full from the night before when we went out to eat. but the food was good :). and with dad treating, it's hard to complain.
(NPS)
we did things in a quasi-chronological order. the whole area down there is fairly fraught with history. that is, history about 400 years old. not too old compared to european history, but definately old as far as anglo-saxon north america is concerned. we visited historic jamestowne, both the reenactment and the actual location. the most interesting at the reenactment was the ships. rather, the replicas of the three ships that brought the first jamestown settlers over. they were ver ver small. The largest was 55 feet long and carried 71 colonists (some info). the smallest one i'd have hated to lived a month with more than three people on board, but it held 21. it had to be absolutely nasty coming over. its unimaginable how much worse slave ships would have been in later years. the most intersting thing about the actual site as some of the archeological digging that they were working on while we were there, not neccessarily anything at the actual site.
we also visited fort monroe, which is the only active military installation in the us that has a moat. that's a pretty cool place, you can walk all the way around the top of the moat (1.35 miles, i checked). the musuem's pretty cool there too. across from fort monroe is fort wool, whcih is fairly dilapidated. we took a river cruise that went to fort wool (i64 goes right by it, but the only public access is by water), then headed over to cruise by the naval yards. there's a parkway that goes between yorktown and jamestown called (oddly enough) the colonial parkway. it's brushed concrete, the type that looks like little pebbles glued together. it's about the only pretty thing in that area of va, all tree lined and enclosed. nice brick bridges and overpasses. the autotour at yorktown was pretty too, going way back in teh woods to where g. washington's headquarters were during the siege at yorktown. after visiting yorktown, both movies "the patriot" and "the last of the mohicans" make more sense.
ahh, coming back on sunday we visited a few plantations along the james. now that was pretty and very enjoyable. long tree-lined drives, extensive gardens, and of course a water-front view. i personally could do without that (mountains would be a nice touch :) ). but unfortunately i have as yet been unable to fully rationalize immense personal ownership of material possesions in order to reconcile it with some sort of ministry. especially when you'd have to spend either an immense amount of time or an immense amount of money just to keep the place up.
one more note, if you're ever in williamsburg along us60 and are looking for a place to eat, stop at ruby tuesdays and get stephani to be your waiter (either it was stephani or it was stephanie that the computer cut off the last letter becuase the ticked said stephani). the food was excellent, the service was excellent, and that was by far the best night of eating out we had. that said, it was nice to go home and have home-cooked food for the next while :).
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