Day 11 - Monticello and Michie Tavern

Day 11 was our 2nd day of exploring the homes of our past presidents.  We know that there were many options to choose from, but in the end, we decided on George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.  We picked Mount Vernon because we had recently studied George Washington and his role in the French-Indian War and in the Revolution.  And when my husband was a boy, he vacationed down in Virginia with his family, and the two places he loved the most were Williamsburg and Monticello, so they also made there way on our must do list.

When you arrive in the parking lot for Monticello, you buy your ticket and then wait for the shuttle to bring you up the hill to Thomas Jefferson's home.  We opted not to bring our stroller with us, because while there were areas that were accessible for strollers and wheelchairs, the loading and unloading it onto the shuttle, and knowing that most of the area was rough, we decided to skip the stroller.  I think it was a good call on our part.  It would have been a bother trying to push the stroller through many of the areas.

Now, I know George Washington went on and on about the views from his house, but I'm sorry - Thomas Jefferson has got him beat.  The area was flat out gorgeous. 

Near the orchard

It looks like one big hill in the picture, but it's not.  It was like a giant staircase garden.  Pretty neat!

Staircase gardening!

Ken carried a sleeping Felix on the guided tour of the gardens, while I stayed with the other children.  They wanted to explore the gardens on their own.  They were much more interested in the birds that were roosting in the trees, butterflies that were going from flower to flower and bugs that were crawling around the garden plants than in a historical tour of the garden.

After Ken finished the tour, he took me and the children around and shared what he had learned.

The chimney from one of the original buildings.

After spending time in the gardens, we headed over to the main house because it was time for the tour.

After having failed attempts at home tours in Shirley and Mount Vernon, I decided to sit this one out with Felix.  We had just finished up learning about Lewis and Clark, so I thought for sure that the children would want to go inside on the tour and see all the things that they brought back, which we knew were on display inside.  Ainsley and Ephraim decided to "play in Thomas Jefferson's backyard."  Nathaniel was REALLY torn on what he wanted to do.  He finally decided that he would stay with me, and then proceeded to lament that decision the entire time.  He was able to join his Papa towards the end of the tour when they made an appearance outside.

Once Ken and Nathaniel had come back from their tour, we walked the path and looked at the flowers blooming everywhere. The kids found a little pond filled with tadpoles.  They were amazed.  It was their first time seeing a tadpole in real life.

Discovering Tadpoles

I can't exactly remember the original purpose of the next area that we toured, but it was a basement of sorts.  It now houses many hands on examples of Thomas Jefferson's inventions.  The kids had fun in this area.

Just outside the hands-on area for inventions

After spending some time in this area, we were starting to get hungry, so we took the shuttle back to our car and headed for our destination for lunch: Michie Tavern!

Picture time with Thomas Jefferson

Like so many other places in Virginia, I would never have known about this place if I hadn't stumbled onto this site: http://www.virginia-beach-family-fun.com/michie-tavern.html. 

Michie Tavern (pronounce like the mouse - MIC-KEY-MOUSE) offers both a buffet meal and a tour of the house and grounds.  You can either just have lunch, just do the tour, or do both.  We chose to do both.  It is also VERY close to Monticello.  Maybe a 5 minute drive, if that.

Lunch at Michie Tavern

We enjoyed our lunch here, but if I had to choose between the Mount Vernon Inn or Michie Tavern, the Mount Vernon Inn would win hands down.  The food there was better, and we paid less for our lunch in Mount Vernon than in Michie Tavern.  Adults are $17 each, and children over 6 were $7.  One child under 6 per adult eats free.

Now don't get me wrong, the food WAS very good.  And the staff here was great.  They had mashed potatoes and gravy that was amazing. I ate way more of those than I should have, because I adore mashed potatoes and gravy.  They had Fried chicken, baked chicken and pulled pork, cornbread (which my husband loved), biscuits (which my children loved), and a few different veggies that most of my children were unwilling to try.  (Things like beets and stewed tomatoes.)  For dessert, there was ice cream, fresh fruit and peach cobbler.  You can see the full menu here.

After lunch, we went over to take a tour of the tavern.  We had a lot of fun here, even though we had the only kids on the tour.  My kids loved learning the Virginian Reel.  Ken sat out with Felix during the dance because I had sat out during the house tour.  I think in reality, he just didn't want to dance!!

After a tour of the house, we were allowed to explore the yard.  We had two favorite parts.  The first one was the outhouse.  Yup, the outhouse.  Here is why:

Sign hanging in the outhouse

Notice: If ye bottom falls through seat, do not call proprieters.  Use ye rope to pull ye out.  

Mrs. Michie

Obviously, not true, but didn't stop us from laughing hysterically!

The second part that we loved was the fact that they used a spring in the back yard to refrigerate perishables.  It just amazed us how inventive people were when they didn't have the modern inventions of today!  If I was suddenly stranded on a deserted island, I'm not so sure I would have thought of this without reading about it first!

old fashioned refrigeration

We finally wandered down to the gift shop, and if you do nothing else here, you should visit the gift shop.  My children didn't know which way to turn first.  It is filled with tons of old fashioned gifts for old and young alike.  After a lot of hemming and hawing over what souvenir they wanted, Nathaniel finally decided on a pocket knife that had Michie Tavern etched on the side and Ainsley decided on a crocheting set.  We allowed the children to pick one souvenir each for each area we were - so one pick in southern Virginia, one in northern Virginia, and one in Baltimore.  We reserved the right to say no to anything too pricy or foolish - we did  not need another stuffed animal laying around!

After our enjoyable break over at Michie Tavern, we headed back to Monticello.  There were still areas we hadn't explored that we wanted to.  Mainly the Mountain Top Hands-On Kids Center!

For any kid, hands-on equals fun, and this place was no exception!  We spent the rest of the afternoon here.  There was blocks to build with, checkers to play, and a little house to show kids how the slaves lived. 

Cooking up a meal in the slave's quarters

Playing blocks with another homeschooler

Playing with the blocks

I lost.  He won.

We left as the museum was closing.  We had a good day here, but I don't think a full day would be necessary if we didn't leave and spend a few hours over at Michie Tavern.  We left again feeling like it was good that we went, and that we had fun, but that we wouldn't necessarily visit again if we were in the area.  Mount Vernon and Monticello both fell under the "once is enough" category for us.

Day 10 - Mount Vernon

So for our tenth day of vacation, we went over to George Washington's home, Mount Vernon.  We hadn't even made it out of the parking lot before the kids found their first adventure of the day - squirrels.

The kids were munching on a breakfast snack of peaches in the stroller while Ken and I were unloading the car, when I hear a whispered voice calling me.  I turn around to see Nathaniel wide eyed and making the "shhhhh" sign and motioning me to come over to them.  So I quietly walked over to see this:

Super friendly squirrel

A little tiny squirrel trying to figure out to convince the kids to share their peaches.  And of course, the kids were all over this.  Nothing George Washington could offer them could possibly come close to feeding a squirrel peaches!

It wasn't this one squirrel that was over friendly - ALL the squirrels were.  I was glad we had made plans to eat at the Mount Vernon Inn for lunch instead of doing a picnic.  I'm pretty sure the squirrels would have joined us for lunch if we had.

After the squirrel grew bored with us, the children permitted us to go ahead to the Mount Vernon entrance!

 

While Ken bought tickets, we of course spent the time taking photos!

We bought the basic package with the audio tour because we had enjoyed the audio tour of Luray Caverns so much.  The audio tour cost $6 per audio device.  We got one for Ainsley, and one for Nathaniel. 

It was early in the day, and the movie "We Fight to be Free" was just about to start, so we piled into the mostly empty theater to watch the movie.  We all LOVED the movie.  It was very well done, and it was chuck full of action, which of course my boys loved. (Nothing gory or inappropriate).

Then we moved onto the mansion tour, which Felix once again caused me to leave early.  Ainsley volunteered to come with me, and so the 3 of us headed to George Washington's backyard.  I had a seat in one of the rocking chairs and I watched Ainsley and Felix play on the lawn.  I was a little nervous of them getting too close to the edge of the hill and falling Princess Bride style down into the river, but thankfully, that didn't happen!

Can you see the drop off of the hill behind them?

By the time we finished the movie and the mansion tour, we were actually starting to get hungry.  We also thought that since there were plenty of people around, we should get to lunch BEFORE the lunch crowd hit!  So we got to the Mount Vernon Inn just after 11, and waited for our table to be ready.  We had fun wandering around the gift shop area, looking at the different books, jewelry and toys while we waited.

I was glad we went early, because by the time our table was ready, we were STARVING!  I have no idea why we were so hungry that day!  We had breakfast and a snack before we started our tour, and yet, here it was, not even noon, and we felt like we hadn't eaten all day!

I don't have many pictures from inside the restaurant, because I didn't want to be the weird lady who takes a million pictures of her families food in a restaurant.  So here are the two pictures I have from our lunch.  The first one I did not take.  Ephraim took that picture. I would prefer to be the weird lady taking pictures of her food as opposed to the weird lady taking pictures of other people eating.

Ignore the people eating - cute place, right?

This is the only other picture we have from inside the restaurant.  :)  And I took that because I was hoping that maybe the people Ephraim took a picture of wouldn't have noticed and hopefully thought the flash was due to me taking pictures of my kids!

Lunch was really good and reasonably priced.  It wasn't super cheap, but it wasn't over priced either.  The only thing that was "overpriced" were the drinks.  And that was because they didn't have the normal Pepsi, Sprite etc. that most restaurants have for $1 or so.  They had more specialty drinks.  Some of us got the Sparkling Apple Cider, some of us had the root beer.  Both were VERY good.

For our meals, the 3 younger split the Chicken Fingers, chips and fruit.  My younger kids are very light eaters, so they usually split a kid's meal.  We figured if one wasn't enough, we could always add another.  But one was enough for them.

Nathaniel on the other hand, has switched from barely eating enough to keep a bird alive, to eating enough to feed a small army.  He saw a Pulled Pork Sandwich on the menu and asked if he could get that.  Someone near us had one, and I told him that I doubt he'd finish the whole thing, but Ken said he could order it, and take the leftovers home.  The kid seriously must have a hollow wooden leg somewhere, because he ate the ENTIRE thing, and finished off what I didn't finish on my plate!  So much for eating his leftovers later!!

I love Thanksgiving dinner, so I opted to go with the plantation chicken with stuffing and veggies.  The stuffing was very good, but I'm kind of spoiled when it comes to stuffing.  I make amazing stuffing.  So this was good, but mine is better.  :) All in all, mine was very good, but I think I would have enjoyed it more if I hadn't swiped a bite or twelve of Ken's meal.  He got the Duck and Sausage Cassolet.  It was amazing.  I wish I had ordered it!  But my hubby let me swipe a few bites because he loves me.  He was more than willing to save some room in his tummy for some Pecan Pie.  That is his favorite.  I'm a very good cook, but the Pecan Pie I have not mastered yet!  The rest of us were too full for dessert!  If you are interested, the lunch menu is here, the dinner menu is here, and the information on the restaurant is here. Obviously, we chose lunch for the prices!

After lunch, we started wandering around and listening to our audio tours.  My children's favorite area for the audio tour hands down was the slave quarter area. 

Listening to the audio tour

We enjoyed this audio tour, and it was very informative.  They had a kid and adult version like in Luray.

They also had many farm animals, which all children love!

After touring around, it started to drizzle, so we headed to the inside part of the museum.  There was a lot to take in, and the kids had fun in here.  There was a hands on children section that closes earlier than the rest of the museum, but thankfully we did get to spend a few minutes in there.

Nathaniel and Ainsley as George and Martha

My kids love cut outs!

Dress up!

There was a break in the rain, and less than an hour left before the museum closed, so we decided to make a run for the van and head home for the night. We had a fun day at Mount Vernon.  I'm not sure that it would be on the "must do" list with kids, but we did have fun!

Day 9 - Exploring Lake Anna

We had a nice leisurely day planned for today.  We were planning on simply exploring Lake Anna State Park, and the weather was cooperating nicely for us to do that!!  While we unpacked, and tidied up the house, the kids played on the porch, driveway area, and the back yard.   You can easily see the backyard from the kitchen and the master bedroom, and the porch wraps around the front of the house.  Lake Anna had the houses right on top of each other, when compared to Chippokes Plantation, so I didn't feel as comfortable letting them play outside without constantly checking up on them.  (Not that I felt unsafe in the park, just you never know who is around!)  Having them be in my line of sight at all times put my mind at ease, and I was glad that the house had plenty of windows and doors to check up on them!

It wasn't long before the house was in order and we joined the children in the sunshine.  There were TONS of butterflies around, and my kids were busy trying to convince them to land on them.  :)

Nathaniel trying to convince the butterfly to land on him.

There was another animal that was abundant in this area - lizards.  Itty bitty tiny lizards.  They dash about and make my husband scream like a girl.  Lol.  He doesn't like things that dash about and startle him!  At one point, Nathaniel cornered one and tried to catch it, but it was too quick.  Nathaniel was able to catch it by it's tail and suddenly Nathaniel was screetching in disgust that the tip of the lizard's tail fell off in his hand!

Tip of the lizard's tail

After a while, we convinced them to give up on chasing butterflies and lizards, to change into their swim suits and we'd go down to the lake and play on the playground and swim in the lake.  They were more than eager to comply!!!

Fun on the Playground

The kids played on the playground until they got good and hot, so that they'd enjoy the lake even more.  Even though it was only May, it was quite warm - warm enough that I wish I had changed into my swimsuit as well!

The lake has a nice sandy beach area to have all sorts of beachy fun!  Close to the shore, the lake wasn't very deep, so I didn't need to worry too much about my kids who weren't strong swimmers yet.  In Mid-May, there are no lifeguards on duty, and there is also NO ONE around.  We had the entire beach to ourselves. 

Lake Anna

Fun in the sun

Shallow near the shore - no steep drop off

Great sandy beach to have fun in

Fun in the sand

Tag in the lake

Spots in the lake are deep enough to swim

Summer fun!

Seriously, could he be any cuter!?

 After a few hours by the lake, we started to hear thunder in the distance.  After hearing it two or three times and seeing the clouds black and billowing in the distance, we decided to head back home.

Storm rolling in as we left

 Of course, all the kids were a sandy, lake water mess, so we sent the older two to take turns in the shower, and stuck the younger two into the sink.

Double sink for double baths!

Once everyone was clean and in PJ's, we took some blankets, and headed to the covered porch to watch the storm blow in, the rain pour down and the lightning light up the dark sky.

Thunderstorm watching on the porch

Snuggles on the porch

After dinner, we put our fireplace to good use and built a nice fire and made some S'mores!

Too little for S'mores - at least he can have a graham cracker

Roasting Marshmallows with Papa

Roasted Marshmallows.  Mmmmm.

After eating way too many S'mores, the kids headed to bed.  We had all sorts of adventures to pack into the next two days, so it was nice to have such a relaxing day!!

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