road trip, part 3

I'm going to make this the final installation, so bear with me and all the pictures I have.  Where were we?  Colonial Williamsburg.  I went with my parents when I was 17 and remember thinking it was SOOO  BORING.  AND LAME.  And so of course now that I'm an adult, I couldn't wait to go back!  In hindsight, what is cooler than a whole village where people dress up in costume and teach you things about our history?  Yes, awesome.  We would have actually enjoyed it if it hadn't been 101 degrees with 100% humidity.  Yuck.  We were sweating profusely just standing still.  Can you imagine what those villagers felt like in all the costumes they had to wear?

I felt sorry for them.  Almost as much as I felt sorry for myself.  Luckily most of the buildings/homes were air conditioned, so we basically ducked into every one we saw.  Here is the lovely Governor's Palace.

It's not the original.  Apparently a lot of buildings just up and burned down to the ground back then.  I would tell you more, but I didn't pay too close of attention to the guide.  I was busy concentrating on the sweat dripping off the end of my nose.  Gross.  Plus she was Russian, which I found distracting.  I kept wondering what the chances were that there was a Russian there in 1776.

Anyway, there were beautiful gardens behind the palace, including this arbor tunnel.  I like a good green tunnel.  It looks like a fairy tale, no?

There was also a hedge maze.  It was just like the Shining.  Here's Brian trying to find his way out.  Heh.

This is the little coffeehouse, where you have a little sit down with one of the proprietors who insults you on where you are from or for being a woman.  It was like a Colonial Ed Debevics.  But then they served you coffee, tea, or hot chocolate, which was really good.  It had some spiciness to it like Mexican chocolate.  It came highly recommended by a 10 year old girl we had met on the bus earlier, and she was right!  The guy in the blue tights was the one paid to be a douche. 

Then we moved onto the courthouse, where I reveled in all of the post-Colonial air conditioning being pumped through.  I have no idea what the guide talked about.  I think I fell asleep.

Here are a couple pictures from the inside that I took between naps.  I'm sure if I hadn't been exhaustedly hot, I would have really paid attention and would have had all sorts of interesting things to tell you about the courthouse.  But here are some pictures; feel free to make up stuff about what you see.

I have to hand it to those Colonial people.  They knew how to keep things looking green and lush in the face of extreme heat.  Washington D.C. could learn a lesson or two from them.

We spent the day there, and by the end were really worn out from the heat.  We had about a 6 hour drive still to South Carolina, so we got on the road.  We were pretty close to some of my family on this trip, but had too tight of a schedule to stop and see anyone.  We'll be back down soon to visit everyone, though!  We got to Columbia at about midnight to find all the hotels booked.  This is where planning ahead comes in handy.  But we finally found a hotel in downtown Columbia, which was a lot smaller than I expected.  And there was NO ONE OUT.  It was weird.  I know it was late, but no one coming out of bars, driving, or anything.  It was like a ghost town.

The next day we looked at 5 houses total and found one that suited our needs.  It even had the exact same play set in the backyard, so we were pretty happy about that.  There's lots of room for visitors, so everyone come see me, please!!  My only complaint is what passes for grass down there.  But I'm sure I won't be complaining about anything come winter and I don't have to deal with the Chicago-land weather.  I'll post pictures from around the house once we're back down there.

At that point we were missing the littles a LOT.  So we decided to get on the road that evening.  We had planned to be gone a week, but we were gone for 5 days instead.  That's the longest I'd ever been away from the kids.  We got more beautiful views as we drove through the Smoky Mountains.  Beautiful.

We stayed the night in Knoxville, where we took advantage of our last night by going out for dinner and a movie.  The movie theater was in a mall, about 10 miles from our hotel.  Our gps took lots of twisty turns to get there, it seemed.  When we got to the mall, it was after 9 pm, so the main part of it was closed.  We saw the big neon sign for the theater, so we tried to go into the doors beneath the sign.  A mall cop came out of nowhere, yelling at us, her hand at her gun.  Uh, scratch that- her hand at her radio.  Mall cops don't get guns!  I could tell Brian was restraining himself beside me; he has a thing for people with little authority who flex their little amount of authority.  TSA, for example.  She sent us to the other side of the mall.  So we got back into the car, drove around to the other side, and found more neon signs for the theater.  But no apparent opening INTO the theater.  After driving around for a few minutes, we drove into the parking garage.  There we found the opening on the 4th floor of the garage.  Kind of tucked away in a corner.  Bizarre.

The next day we woke up and drove home.  It was a long trip, and when I saw these windmills, I knew we were close to the kids.

It was good to get home and get hugs and kisses from the littles.  We've been back a week, but I'm ready for a vacation!