Virginia - Days 5 & 6

Prince William Forest RV Campground, Dumfries
Tuesday, 5 & Wednesday, 6 March 2019

I woke up Tuesday morning to a wind chill temperature of 11°.  The dogs got a much shorter walk than usual for both the first and second walks.  I don't think it ever did get above freezing all day, so I figured it was a good day for hunkering down, which is what I did.

Wednesday it was a full 10° warmer, which is still pretty chilly to me, and it wasn't forecast to get much above 35° all day, so I decided to stay right where I was.

I spent some of the 2 days doing things like washing the new sheets and making up the new mattress, taking a shower (the water was hot but the lights went off half-way through), sweeping and storing the double-size sheets, exchanging the Dick Francis books for the Harry Potter books, extending my stay here until Friday - you know, chores.

So much thicker than the old one - the top of the mattress comes all the way up to the window, so I can't have pillows there when I'm driving and need to see behind me.

But most of the time I spent trying to figure out where things are in Virginia that I want to visit and where the nearest open campgrounds are to those things.  It's amazing how long that process can take.

For instance, I'd be happy to continue staying here at this campground for a while longer so tried to figure out what I wanted to see in northern Virginia.  Turns out, not a lot.  I want to go back to Arlington National Cemetery and also visit the 9/11 Pentagon Memorial.  But the website advises taking the Metrorail to get to the Pentagon because parking is so limited there.  And I saw where the Metrorail stops at the cemetery and figured out for myself that the Metrorail might be preferable to driving in that convoluted traffic as I did last week.  Even though both are in Virginia, I figure it makes more sense to wait until I come back in 3 years for a month in Washington, DC, when I'll want to take the Metrorail to other places as well.

I remember visiting Mount Vernon when I was about 12 and our family was here, and I don't really want to spend my time this trip doing it again.  Instead, I thought I'd visit Washington's birthplace, which is southeast of Fredericksburg not far from the coast.  In fact, 8 presidents were born in Virginia (and aren't they proud of it), so I'll try to get to all of them.  Several were also born near Washington, and most of the others are in central Virginia.  It's easy to see where people were settling, based on where these presidents are from.  The most recent was Woodrow Wilson, who was a while ago.

But there's more in Virginia than presidents and battlefields (though there are plenty of both).  For instance, the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk is famous for its decorative glass collection and I'd like to visit.  The Great Dismal Swamp isn't far inland from Virginia Beach.  Newport News is one of the world's largest shipbuilding centers.  Things like that.

Then there's the campground situation.  Most of the campgrounds that are open are either in the Newport News/Virginia Beach area or in the Blue Ridge/Shenandoah Valley area.  I figure I'll wait until much later in the month to check out the mountains, hoping for warmer, more spring-like weather.  So that puts me in southeast VA for about a week, starting this Friday when my time is up here. 

I made a reservation for 2 nights at a Newport News campground; if I like it, I'll stay longer because from there I can do the whole Jamestown, Yorktown, Williamsburg area as well as Newport News and Hampton Roads.  Then I can find another campground down across the James River around Norfolk & Virginia Beach and visit all the things down there.  Maybe by then it'll be warmer over in Roanoke and Charlottesville, on the way to the Blue Ridge Mountains.

That's my plan, anyway.  But it's incredible how much time it took to figure all this out, a result of not having much of a clue about Virginia's geography and having to look everything up on the map.