Home to the Commonwealth: Day 2, Monticello

Let's just start this day off right with a quote I can no longer live without (now that I've seen it): ;)

Now that that's settled, on May 30th we set out driving south to Charlottesville, VA to visit the marvelous Thomas Jefferson's home, Monticello. On the way there, we listened to just about every Taylor Swift song known to man and I learned all sorts of pop culture stories that I never knew I didn't know (haha) - but wasn't the drive beautiful???

And we only had to stop and ask for directions once. And we weren't too far off course either. yippee!

We stopped first at Michie's Tavern, a little historical site with colonial stuff. And we discovered this Clothier's Shop, where you can not only buy all sorts of colonial garb and accessories, but they also help fit you in it and let you go outside to pose for pictures! Fun!!

(Chelsea and Heather did the honors)

And, Monticello. I know I've been there on at least one school field trip at some point in my life, but Heather and Chelsea had never been there, and things are always a little different visiting them as an adult rather than a school kid, so I enjoyed it thoroughly. It was just really really hot. VA was having a nasty heat wave with temps in the high 90's and heat indexes over 100 (with the high humidity). It was sort of miserable.

But, lots of pretty flowers to take photos of, an underground tunnel (shade and cooler temp, hallelujah), and interesting things all around made it all worth it.

(I loved taking these shots, and couldn't pick just one. Macro flower shots with blurred Monticello in the background - yay!)

I really wished I could have bought the replica of Jefferson's rotating reading stand which held 5 books open to a page all at once - but I didn't have the ~$500 to spend. Darn. So I contented myself with buying a magnet with his quote "I cannot live without books." Love that Jefferson. ;)

And then . . . Heather really wanted to take a peek at the University of Virginia (which Jefferson also designed and founded) so we meandered over there with the help of her iphone GPS. We didn't even get lost this time (oh our many driving adventures!). Here are some pics of the part of campus we saw real quick:

Then, to try to avoid Memorial Day traffic on I-95, we took a back-road route back up north again and I love love loved the drive. We didn't hit any traffic at all. There were many hilly and swervy little roads, the trees were beautiful, and we passed some nostalgic places (some of which I didn't even know were along the way) including the German restaurant where our High School German Club went on a field trip for dinner a couple times, a road that I'm pretty sure I drove often to my violin lesson but would never be able to find my way around again, and other places where I remembered certain people, events, occasions that I had nearly forgotten. Craziness.

And that sums up Day #2 I think! hooray:)