Richmond, Virginia

June 4-6, 2016

Sometimes our timing is accidentally perfect.  It was in Richmond.

We thought we were in for the night when Dave talked with the campground host about local attractions.  She mentioned that the Cold Harbor battlefield was having its annual lantern walk that night preceded by a Civil War music concert.  We were on our way in a flash!

Local musicians in Civil War period costumes sang and played guitar, banjo, and violin as the sun set.  Then a ranger led us to 7 stations on the battlefield where we heard from soldiers on both sides as they prepared for the next day’s battle, women who lost loved ones and property, and a veteran from a retirement home as he relived the horrors he had experienced.

Civil War music concert

The next day we visited Tredegar Iron Works on the James River.  It was the third-largest iron works in the U.S. when the Civil War started.  It produced rail tracks, locomotives and steam engines for ships.  During the war, it provided munitions for the Confederacy.  A turbine and rolling mill remain.  Old walls have been reinforced and a museum and visitors center built within them.  We walked along one hall of pictures of Richmond and heard people’s experiences during the battle for Richmond.  We met a ranger we had talked with at Cold Harbor and he taught us (and three others) to fire a Napoleon cannon (good thing we’d had some instruction at Savannah’s Fort Jackson!).

Chain from the CSS Virginia

On the grounds at Tredegar is anchor chain from the CSS Virginia.  She was built on the hull of a scuttled steam frigate the USS Merrimac and was the first steam-powered ironclad warship built by the Confederate states.  The Virginia took part in the first battle of ironclad ships with the USS Monitor.

We drove around downtown Richmond, taking in Monument Avenue (great old houses on either side of a parkway with statues of notable, especially Confederate, Virginians including Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, J.E.B. Stuart, and Jefferson Davis) and the nearby statue of Bill “Bojangles” Robinson.  Jane especially appreciated driving by the John Marshall House–Marshall was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and authored key decisions she almost remembers studying in Constitutional Law.

John Marshall House, Richmond

In our second example of good timing in Richmond, we followed the recommendation of a woman in the Visitors Center and took in Broad Appetite, a hundred booths of food and beverages offered by local restaurants once a year.  A wonderful experience for tired and hungry travelers.