We had a not-quite-so-early wake up this morning-- we actually got to sleep in until the sun was up which was nice for a change!! Michael made us a nice hot breakfast that turned out to be a huge blessing as our lunchtime turned out to be MUCH later than we expected! We departed Bull Run around 9:30 and took our chances with the Virginia morning traffic. I had gotten 'back roads' directions from the campground host to our intended destination (Mt. Vernon)-- which turned out to be not so much back roads as interstates (that in all fairness weren't too busy). The bigger surprise was the LONG stretch of road that was a 2 or 3 lane highway with UNMARKED LANES!!! Seriously. We were joking that Virginia must have run out of paint??! They had clearly been recently repaved but there were no DOT vehicles in the vicinity so it wasn't like they had just finished and hadn't had time to put down the striping yet but would be there momentarily to do it... there were even signs stating that "Unmarked Roads" were ahead... so evidently unmarked roads are common enough that there are signs made for them?!?! So strange... and slightly scary!
We arrived at Mt. Vernon to a traffic jam with a ton of police directing traffic-- that I was not expecting during our 'off season' visit to DC. Turns out that George Washington finally got a Presidential Library. Last night. And everyone was still celebrating it and hosting special lunches and such for all the big-wigs involved. Oops. I SO missed all of this on my trip-planning research. Although in my defense, I really do not think that the Mt. Vernon people happened to mention this on their calendar!! After an arduous process of trying to park the RV (all the RV parking spots were filled with cars. Pet Peeve Alert-- PLEASE DO NOT EVER DO THIS! It is stinkin' hard enough to find places that to park an RV-- when those spaces are filled with cars who can easily park in 55 other places, it is SO FRUSTRATING. End of Rant/Pet Peeve Alert.) we made it to the gate. It was now 11:30.
We wandered through some of the gardens on our way to the tour of the mansion. So beautiful and so much variety! He had a greenhouse for citrus and tropical plants that had heat piped in via a fireplace all winter long, requiring the slaves to actually sleep in the room where the fires were so that they never went out. This allowed him to have all sorts of plants/trees that were non-native to Virginia.
We enjoyed the tour of the house-- I had forgotten how colorful some of the rooms were! Bright blues and greens. We were especially fascinated how the exterior wood siding was carved and treated to look like it was stone.
In honor of my first trip to Mt. Vernon when I was about 7 years old, we recreated family portrait on the back lawn of the house. (This is for you, Mom!!)
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| Photo-bomber!! |
We took the time to visit the Washington's gravesite as well as let Emma complete the "Adventure Map" puzzle (which netted her a free pressed penny souvenier!). They also had a quill pen demonstation and everyone took turns writing with it.
It was now after 2:30 and we had not yet eaten lunch, so we decided to finish up our visit at the Estate. You could literally spend all day here and not see everything. It was a great introduction to our time in DC-- learning more about this great man and all that he did for the United States!
Our campground for tonight is Pohick Bay Regional Park-- another Virginia State Park. It is another really nice park (and it also has a water park attached to it like Bull Run did-- these places must be SUPER popular in the summer!!). Michael was thrilled that there was a running trail between this park and another nearby one (Mason's Neck). He had a 9 mile run scheduled today. The view below was his halfway point. He ran into (no pun intended!) many deer along the route including a buck!
The girls and I decided to take advantage of the putt-putt course that was only a 'short walk' (ha!) from our campsite. They took "Scavenger Hunt" bags from the camp store which asked them to find certain items in the woods and return for a prize (which was fairly lame but looking for the items was fun!). The putt-putt course was pirate themed (in case you didn't gather that from the picture below!). The youngest player made two holes-in-one... but the oldest player managed to pull off a fairly impressive win!!
After Michael returned from his run, we had a late dinner and then Emma wanted to build a fire herself... she did have a bit of supervision and help with cutting wood but she managed a pretty impressive little fire!
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