Days 48-49, October 27-28, 2021

This likely will be the last blog of this incredible cross-country adventure. We spent Wednesday morning in Jamestown, Virginia, and Thursday afternoon and evening in Gloucester, Virginia. We traveled north on Thursday with brief stops in Washington, D.C. and at the Great Falls National Park in McLean, Virginia. We ended the day in Reisterstown, Maryland, at the home of our daughter, son-in-law, and two grandsons. We’ll be here through the weekend before moving on to New Jersey for a few days to visit my brother and his family. Then it’s back to Maine. We’ve traveled 9,920 miles and will clearly surpass 10,000 before returning home.

As much as we enjoyed Williamsburg on Tuesday, Jamestown was equally enjoyable with its history, reenactors, and beautiful fall weather.

We watched an informative movie about its history, toured the museum, walked through the replicas of the Powhatan Indian village, the English fort, and onto replicas of the three ships that brought 105 colonists to Virginia, making Jamestown the first permanent English settlement in North America in 1607.

From the replica of the settlement, we drove down to the site of the actual settlement on the James River.

Before leaving Jamestown, we had lunch at the Visitor’s Center of peanut soup in a sourdough bread bowl, a Virginia specialty.

Leaving Jamestown, we headed to Gloucester to visit my 91-year-old second cousin, Agnes.

While visiting Agnes, we stopped at the historic home where she grew up, the Abington Glebe House built in 1677. When Agnes and her three sisters lived there with her parents, my great aunt and uncle, we used to visit during Easter vacations in the 1950s. My great aunt used to tell us the home used to be an inn in which George Washington’s father once slept. We have not been able to verify it. It now is owned by the St. James Anglican Church.

On Thursday we continued north to Washington, hoping to tour the U.S. Capitol Building. As many times as we’ve been to Washington and toured the monuments and museums, we’ve never gone into the Capitol. Wd didn’t this time either — it’s closed indefinitely because of COVID, as are many other D.C buildings. We spent some time walking around Capitol Hill — the Capitol and U.S. Supreme Court — but that was the the extent of this D.C. visit.

Our final stop, 30 minutes northwest of D.C., was the Great Falls National Park, our 11th national park of this trip, but completely unknown to us until our daughter told us about it a few weeks ago.

The park is at a point where the Potomac River funnels into a narrow gorge and cascades over jagged and steep rocks.

Signing off for now. Thank you for following us and the comments many of you have made. We’ll be back in Maine next week.