Hot in Jamestown

This morning was more relaxed than yesterday. The boys and I didn't start walking down to the breakfast at our hotel until 8:00am. I wish I could say they slept in this morning, but I can't. It didn't help that an alarm clock went off in our room at 6:00am. We explored part of the museum before we met our tour guide. Our tour wasn't private today, but they split our group into two groups. We were with the larger group which included only one other family in addition to ours. That family had a mom plus six children. Paul's parents joined us for the two hour tour, and the site had a scooter Grandma was able to use at no charge. The tour was entirely outside - at a recreation of a Powhatan village, recreation of the three ships that were used in 1607, and a recreation of Fort James. Because I purchased homeschool tickets, we got in for a very reduced rate PLUS had these free tours. There were hands-on activities along the way such as moving the rudder on the Susan Constant, scraping hair off a hide with a shell, scraping the inside of a canoe with a shell, etc. The only downside of the tour was some

things were skipped. For example, we only boarded the Susan Constant whereas we also could have walked around the Godspeed. In the James Fort our guide let us pick two of the buildings to go inside. There were several others we didn't visit. I think if it hadn't been SO hot out (about 100 degrees plus humid) we'd have wandered around more after the tour was done. We did explore a little more of the fort and then went back to watch the movie and explore more of the exhibits in the museum. Paul's parents had lunch at the café while we were exploring as well as while we were eating our light lunch in the van. The hotel offered a nice (free) hot breakfast so we had a light lunch - granola bars, fruit, crackers, etc.

After lunch Paul's parents went back to the hotel. We drove another 1-2 miles to Historic Jamestowne, which is the actual site of where the fort was built in 1607. This was the first national park that we have visited that required us to buy the Junior Ranger booklets. They were only $1 each.

Thankfully they weren't as challenging as the ones at Yorktown yesterday, plus we had more time to complete them. The kids answered the questions on several pages of the workbook and the other two requirements were to watch the movie (we saw it at 3pm) and go on a guided tour. We were thinking of doing the 3:30 tour on archaeology, but the booklets had to be turned in by 4:30 so we chose to go on a 2:00 tour about the first Africans brought to Virginia. We had worked up an appetite, so we stopped at Denny's which is almost across from our hotel. I am looking forward to when we are in our resort in South Carolina in a few days because we'll have a kitchen and won't have to eat dinner out every night because eating at a sit down restaurant (even as informal as Denny's) isn't cheap when you are buying for five people. My diet means my dinner is very cheap as I've just been getting a bowl of soup when we've been eating out lately. Prior to leaving on vacation I had lost 25 pounds total. We shall see if I lose any more on vacation.  When we got

back the kids immediately wanted to go jump in the pool. Since I took the kids to the pool last night, Paul took them tonight. I am exhausted and planning to go to bed very early tonight.

My first trip to Williamsburg and Jamestown was on a fourth grade field trip. It was my very first overnight field trip when I was a student. I remember not being very impressed with Jamestowne at that point, but I loved Colonial Williamsburg. I would say if we weren't collecting Junior Ranger badges, we might have skipped the Historic Jamestowne today. The Jamestown Settlement didn't exist when I was a child, but it's definitely the more kid friendly place to take kids to learn about Jamestown. When the kids and I vacationed down here with my parents in 2015, we only went to Williamsburg because of how young they were. It would be wonderful if it could be at least a little bit cooler tomorrow as we'll be exploring Colonial Williamsburg for about 8 hours.