April 3, 2025 - April 24, 2025 -- TT Williamsburg
Pies 806-856
Written By: Wendy
After our couple days of rest in North Carolina, we were recharged and ready for our next adventure. We continued our trek north to the Thousand Trails campground in Williamsburg, Virginia and dropped off the trailer and then headed up to the DC area for my cousin's wedding. My parents and my brother would be there as well, so the kids were very excited to see their grandparents and Uncle Keith. It was a fun family filled weekend, and I was able to see all my east coast family members that I hadn't seen in 10 years. The wedding was a blast, and Caroline was so enamored by the bride that she is now planning her wedding so that she too can wear a beautiful princess dress one day. Before heading back to our trailer, we took a side trip to see our nation's capital and spent a whirlwind of a day exploring DC. I had recently read several different books to Parker about Abraham Lincoln, and he had been eagerly anticipating us seeing the Lincoln memorial. We parked at one end of the National Mall and took our time leisurely walking down the grassy paths in the middle, watching people play intramural sports and staring in wonder all the gorgeous and intricate buildings. We stopped in the Natural History museum, but since we were crunched for time, we did a quick tour of only the highlights, seeing the marine life exhibits and the Hope Diamond. We continued walking along the mall to tick off all the must sees of the Washington Monument, WWII Memorial, and Korean War Memorial before making it to the Lincoln Memorial. It was a Sunday, so it was crowded, but Parker was so excited that he busted through the crowds and raced up the many steps to see the Lincoln Memorial up close. He was taken aback by the size and stood in awe of our great president and the man he had come to greatly admire based on our recent history lessons. I felt a bit emotional about how touched and excited he was to see this memorial of a president that was long before his time that he very well could have had no interest in. It felt like a parenting win to me that day that I was able instill the values that we admire Lincoln for in my young son where he was able to hold such reverence for him at this young age. After getting all the pictures, we went to see the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial and see if we were in time to catch the last of the blossoming cherry blossoms. Unfortunately, we were just a day or two late, but we were able to see a few blooms left on the trees. Scott expertly angled his phone to snap a couple pictures making it look as if the whole tree was blooming, when in actuality it was just a single branch that had blooms left. Parker also held the MLK Memorial in a place of reverence as he stared up at the giant statue, and I felt proud of what I had taught him. As the sun began to dip, the day grew cold, and we knew it was time to say good bye to our nation's capital and make the 2 hour drive back to our trailer.
The next day started off as usual, but as were we all sitting at the table together the next morning, I noticed a large amount of smoke billowing out of the RV a few spots down. As I was saying to Scott that it looked like someone burned their breakfast, flames ignited, and I yelled at Scott to bring them a fire extinguisher. He ran out with our small fire extinguisher as I watched in the horror at the quickly growing flames. Within seconds, the fire engulfed the whole front of the RV. It was still early, and no one else was outside. I told the kids to stay put and ran outside to knock on doors and alert the neighbors that there was a fire in case it spread since the sites were so close together. I ran back to our trailer and returned to both my kids completely hysterical as they watched the RV go up in flames and both their parents run towards it. I heard sirens coming, and I knew there was nothing else we could do now, so I took the kids to the office so that they did not have to watch the fire any longer. The response time of the fire department was incredibly quick, and they put out the fire without it spreading or the RV exploding (which is a serious concern due to the propane tanks on board). After it was safe, we went back home and debriefed with the kids and did a fire safety lesson. It shook all of us to the core and we needed a full 2 days to recover from that experience. Ours kid played out the scene on repeat with their legos, and magnatiles, and duplos, and whatever else they could find to process what had happened. Scott and I realized just how vulnerable we were based on how quickly that family's life went up in flames. Luckily, no one was injured in the fire, but their RV and everything in it was a total loss.
We took it easy for the next couple of days, and then my parents came down to spend some time with us after they had spent a few days in DC after the wedding. One of the main reasons we chose this specific campground and to stay here for 3 full weeks was because of the proximity to colonial Williamsburg. I remember going to Williamsburg as a child and being completely enamored with the town that aided in my love of learning history. I was so excited to take my own kids and hopefully spark the same passion in them. It was also a place that my parents both loved, so we were all excited to experience it together. One day we went to Jamestown and learned about the first white settlement in North America. We learned about the true history of Pocahontas and the relationship the native Powhatan people had with the white settlers. We explored the recreation of the Jamestown fort, watched the firing of a 1600s musket, and boarded replicas of the ships that they sailed to North America on. It was the perfect way to start our history lesson of the area. The next day, we spent the entire day exploring colonial Williamsburg. We walked in and out of all the shops and learned about the job of the millinery (sell women's clothes), the difference between a foundry and a blacksmith (foundry uses molds), and who George Wythe was (Founding Father & Thomas Jefferson's teacher). We explored the governor's mansion, and Parker stood in awe at the entryway with the over 500 weapons on display. We ate lunch at Shield's Tavern and dinner at King's Arms Tavern, both of which had exceptionally delicious food accurate to the time. I particularly appreciated that at both restaurants, the kids' menu was simply smaller portions of the adult meal. My children loved the fried chicken for lunch and short ribs and carrots for dinner, and I appreciated that they served them real food.
My parents' time with us was short, so we said good bye after a whirlwind of history lessons. Scott and I were also able to sneak in a date night to go see a reenactment of the trial of Israel Hands, a member of Blackbeard's crew, who was actually tried in Williamsburg in 1719. We bought annual passes to Williamsburg, so even after my parents left, we went into Williamsburg almost everyday, even sometimes just to see a performance or walk around to some of our favorite shops again. I was in history heaven, and luckily both my kids were hungry to learn all the history and explore the adorable town on repeat. Caroline was content to stop and dance with the fiddler that played in the streets while Parker wanted to go to the gunsmith and ask about 100 questions. One of the highlights was meeting George Washington. On a warm and sunny afternoon spring afternoon with the scent of flower blossoms in the air, we went to see him give a speech. It was an incredibly moving speech where he spoke about his retirement from presidency and his reasoning behind it and what he hoped for our young nation of the time. I felt hot tears burning in the corners of my eyes several times thinking about where our country is now and what Washington would think. After the speech, Parker patiently waited in line to get a picture with him and ask him a question. When it was his turn, he asked him what his favorite chess piece was. Washington was a bit taken aback, but he ended up having a deep conversation with Parker about chess, and Parker walked away on cloud 9 having talked to George Washington.
Another day we had a 50 Pies party and opened it up to the whole campground. I am continually amazed at how many complete strangers come to our parties and stay and hang out. People are craving relationships, and I am so happy that we are able to provide an opportunity for that, even if only for an afternoon. On couple that came and brought chairs to set up camp for a while was a couple in their 80s who were experiencing young love. They both started traveling after their spouses had passed away several years ago. About a year ago, they had met on the road and decided to start caravaning together. After a few months of that, they moved into the same RV, and now they have found love, as they said. Their eyes sparkled when they talked about meeting each other, and I so enjoyed talking to them that afternoon.
While we were in Williamsburg, Parker celebrated his 6th birthday. On the weekend of his birthday, it was also the 250 anniversary of the gunpowder incident in Williamsburg. On the night before his birthday, they held a reenactment of when Governor Dunmore stole the gun powder from the town magazine in the middle of the night at the time when the country was on the brink of revolution. It was a moving reenactment, and we could feel the fear and confusion from the actors that the people must have felt at the time. The next day was his birthday, which also happened to be Easter. We started off the day with homemade sourdough cinnamon rolls (yes, I did that!) and then an Easter egg hunt. For his birthday, Parker requested that we go to a battlefield and the beach, so we did just that. We went into Yorktown to the Yorktown battlefield historical landmark, where the kids earned their junior ranger badges. After exploring the old cannons and earthworks left behind from the Revolutionary War, we spent the rest of the warm and sunny afternoon at the small beach in downtown Yorktown. Battles had once raged on the beach, but today it was a peaceful bluebird day. The kids splashed in the water and built sandcastles while Scott and I took turns reading and building sand forts. It was a birthday well spent, and Parker went home exhausted and happy that day.
Towards the end of our time in Williamsburg, we planned to have our annual Family Retreat where we would review our family values and mission statement and make sure that we were still on the right course as a family. We have intentions of doing it every year in January to start off the year, but things had been busy. Last year we did it in September, and this year in April, so we're making progress at least! We decided we wanted to do something different for our retreat so that it truly felt like a getaway. We booked at one night stay at the Great Wold Lodge that was just 10 minutes down the road. We arrived early in the day, and the kids loved spending the entire afternoon in large indoor waterpark. We did laps on the large waterslides and spent a long time floating along in the lazy river. At dinner that night, we went over questions with the kids about what our family values are and how we live those out. After bedtime, Scott got us some ice cream from a shop in the lodge, and we went over all our talking points. It felt good to dive into what we were doing as a family and why. We had some big questions that needed to answered, like if we were going back to Wenatchee or continuing to travel at the end of the summer? We made headway on some big conversations and had intentional time to check in on our relationships and family dynamics and any ongoing stressors that we'd been having. The next morning, we woke up before the kids and continued the conversation. It was very fruitful time, and Scott and I were grateful for our shared continued commitment to making our family retreats happen, however difficult it might feel sometimes to make it happen.
The next day, we packed up and said good bye to Williamsburg. I was particularly sad because it was one of my favorite locations we'd been to and one that I had been looking forward to the most. It did not disappoint, and I was happy it happened, but sad that it was over. As always, though, we had something exciting on the horizon! We were heading to meet up with friends and our week long event that we were hosting for 10 families was only a week and a half away!