newport news/williamsburg

the advantage of keeping in touch with people from different times/places in my life is in experiencing relationships that grow and change...i love it...
my train arrived in newport news, VA, over an hour late...since kelley had loaned me an ipod touch for the summer, i was able to take advantage of the free wifi on the train to email my host and let him know i'd be late...unfortunately, he didn't check his email, and didn't get my message...so he was at the train station, just waiting and waiting and waiting...august in this part of the country is hot and humid, so he was sweating...on the train, the aircon was turned up (or down, as i feel is more accurate) big time, i was nearly frozen...

by the time i got off the train, i felt like an ice cube...i wasn't hungry, even though i hadn't eaten since lunch, and it was already after 8pm...don (a friend from my years in high school) got dinner for himself on the way home, while i held on to his dog in the car...gypsy is a jack russell terrier, one of the awesomest dogs ever...she loves to make friends and chase squirrels...
after a quick tour of the flat, i went to sleep...
the next day don went to work, i hung out with gypsy in the flat...she loves when people come to visit, because she doesn't have to stay in his kitchen all day...i played on the computer, napped, did laundry, and was generally useless most of the day...except for taking gypsy out for a couple long walks...we had dinner delivered that night...
the next day was pretty much the same...for dinner we walked to a takeaway place in don's neighbourhood, gypsy loved the walk...she loves any chance to be outside as long as it isn't raining...if it's raining, she resists, to say the least...

saturday don and i did something touristy...we went to visit colonial williamsburg...the area is really close to the campus of william and mary, it is set up as towns were during colonial times...every day in colonial wiliamsburg is the same, the date is always a date when virginia was technically still a colony of the british empire...it's need to see everyone dressed in the clothing of the times, speaking the way they did back then...you get to see the governors house, shoppes and an inn, houses of 'regular' people, the post office, etc..the jail was particularly small, the lady running that said it was more of a temporary place, rather than a place people were jailed for long periods of time...i loved seeing all the different levels of society..

we spent about three hours wandering around, which felt like enough...the lady who sold us the tickets said half a day wasn't nearly enough, we thought it was plenty...i suppose one could explore every building, take all the tours, read all the signs, in which case half a day definitely wouldn't be enough..there are evening programs from time to time, i suppose we could've stuck around for one of those...i don't know how often they take place.. my favourite place was the blacksmith shop...the men working in their must've been HOT, because they were working with open fires! we also particularly enjoyed the building in which all the guns were kept..one 'employee' in there talks about how the militia worked, how each different type of gun worked, etc..i wonder what it would be like today to have such a building in each town..
after walking around for a while, we drove to krista's house...krista is another friend from my hometown...we used to swim together, and we've kept in touch ever since...i visited her in 2009, though she and her husband now have two children, and live in a house they own...krista had made arrangements for a babysitter so the three of us could go out to dinner...good food, good conversation...before leaving, we made plans to get together again before i left town...

we started driving again sometime sunday morning...there are heaps of historical sights in the area, but you have to drive to all of them..thank goodness for GPS:)...first we headed to a former army post called ft monroe...it was decommissioned in 2011 (i think?) and is now open to the public, you can even live in one of the historically designated housing units on post...general lee once lived there, and there is a museum...the post was built way back when, complete with walls all the way around...the best part of visiting ft monroe is the chance to walk around/on the walls...there are also nifty maps showing how the fort fit into the surrounding geography, you can see why the spot was chosen in the first place...we decided first to walk the walls, then check out the museum...

after walking just a short way, we found a distance marker, which made me wonder if there was/is a race run on the walls...a mile long race, something like that?
when the post was active, there was a tradition of burying deceased pets on the outer walls of the post...even though the post is no longer active, you can still see all the grave markers...i think we found them from as far back as the 1930s?  interesting to see how the names of dogs and cats have changed over the years...with all the people who lived on and around the post, i wonder if there was some sort of qualification necessary to be eligible to bury your pet on top of the fort walls?
unfortunately, the wind picked up, and before we knew it, there was rain...ugh...I HATE RAIN...to me, rain is far worse than any other type of weather...
we went through the museum, though neither of us was really in the mood for it...the museum is in the old fort walls, so the rooms have low ceilings, and everything seems a bit dark/dank...the museum has displays about battles in which the fort was important, changing uniforms over the years, the changing military over the years, etc...

hopping back in the car, our next destination was the chesapeake bay bridge tunnel...a model of modern engineering...it wasn't clear enough to see very far, (hence my total lack of photos,) but it was still awesome...it's both a bridge and a tunnel, i don't think i've had that experience before...as you are driving along you can see the bridge go down, and the tunnel come up..it's hard to describe, but it really is rather neat.. on the other side (in maryland) we got lunch at some random roadside place...fried diner food, yum...(yes, i realize it wasn't AT ALL healthy...i almost always love such food, but don't eat it often)..there isn't much in the way of civilization when you first get back to land, which surprised me..somehow i expected there were be a town or city right up to the edge of the land..

after the bridge tunnel, we continued driving to virginia beach...not too long ago, my cousin moved there with his wife and two kids...i thought the kids were 4 and 2, though i'd never met either one of them...the last time i saw my cousin and his wife, she was 3 months pregnant with the first child...my cousin wasn't home, so we didn't get to see, but it was nice to see his wife...and i learned that the kids are 6 and 2...ooops...kathy's dad was visiting, making it even more of a family visit...to say that don felt awkward is putting it mildly...he was social though, and having gypsy with us made for some entertainment...how often do you meet extended family of someone you're not even dating?!?! hee hee...

we expected bad traffic on the way back to newport news, but it wasn't bad at all...the whole area is a peninsula, with very few roads to get around...traffic from virginia beach going back inland is often bad, i'm glad we didn't have to deal with it...
i don't know why, but i had it in my head that i was leaving tuesday morning, but don thought it was monday morning...it's a good thing i checked my email, it turned out he was right...i had to call krista to tell her i was an idiot and we wouldn't be able to get together again...argh...my flight left super early the next morning, so i went to bed super early...all in all, a good visit:)

later in the summer i visited the area again...it was a shorter visit, we didn't do much, at least not in the touristy sense...we got together with krista again, don and i even babysat one night...kids are fun:)...
one day we again drove to virginia beach, the weather was fabulous...we all (don, me, gypsy) enjoyed the walk on the beach...mid september is past tourist season, so it wasn't crowded at all...if it had been a little warmer i would've wanted to wear a bikini, and lay out to soak up sun...i'm sure don wouldn't have had the patience to do that for long, but i am the queen of laying out:)