Virginia

So, in case anyone was wondering, my power did eventually come back on, though I had to replace 3 light bulbs, because apparently florescent bulbs don't like strange half levels of power. Good to know, eh? Anyway. I'm back at work and that means living at the hospital, but I did go visit Jenifer and Carys in Virginia during my vacation, which was lots of fun.

We went out to the coast, to Fort Monroe, which is right by Norfolk and other important shipping channels and such, and the older part of the fort actually has a moat. I got a real kick out of seeing a fort made of stone with a moat here in the U.S.

Just outside the moat was the Old Point Comfort Lighthouse, which clearly has not been painted in awhile, but is otherwise suitably picturesque. I've added it to my file of lighthouse pictures :)

The next day we went to the Shenandoah National Park and hiked two loops that were easy downhill and killer uphill. I really prefer that to be reversed...

Then Jamie came out too, and we went to the Washington D.C. temple. All the flowers were in bloom and everything was quite lovely.

The next day we went to do some sightseeing in Washington D.C., and had an adventure riding the metro, getting all wet, and walking long distances. We didn't go into the capitol building, or even the visitor's center, because they have some very stringent rules about what you can and can't bring in, and we weren't really wanting to throw out our environmentally friendly metal water bottles, so we just took pictures of the outside.

We did go inside the Air and Space Smithsonian museum, which was packed with people, but nevertheless had some really cool stuff, including the Spirit of St Louis, the pictured V2 rocket (not quite as cool as the one in the Imperial War Museum in London, as that one actually landed in London and just failed to explode, and this one was assembled from spare parts when they were studying them and putting together the early space program) and the backup Skylab, which was pretty cool.

The next day we went to Monticello, which was quite lovely and had a nice boardwalk where we paused for a photo op.

Monticello itself was really lovely.

I tried all my wiles on our former president, but his heart was stone (or metal) and he just looked off into the distance...
While at Monticello and environs, I had the opportunity to pay $3 for a buffalo nickel, which I was pretty excited about. I read a book on coin collecting, so I could tell its not the most amazing specimen (they had a really nice one for $35) but it still makes my heart happy. I'll store it next to my other worth-something-only-to-me coins.