Sunday, October 14, 2012

Virginia visit 2012

In the last weekend of September, I went down to Fredericksburg, VA to visit my cousin who was there for work.  I flew in to Dulles and rented a car to drive down as my cousin works for the government and can't have any non-governmental passengers.  It was an awesome weekend for sure. 

The first morning we drove down to Monticello to see where Thomas Jefferson spent most of his time.  The people there do a great job of explaining the house and Jefferson's philosophy so I highly recommend it.  After soaking up some history, we went into Charlottesville for lunch.  It wasn't anything special, but it seems like a pretty cool college town.  That night we went into downtown Fredericksburg for Oktoberfest drinking with my cousin's colleagues.  Most of the people there had been drinking since one in the afternoon, but I caught up with a couple of steins of quality beer.

The next morning we went to George Washington's boyhood home, Chatham House and the Fredericksburg battle site.  Lunch was barbecue and then I headed back to the airport.

Virginia is an awesome place to visit if you're into history since you can't go five miles without passing by a Civil War battlefield.  Flying in to Dulles allows you to bypass the Beltway traffic, but it's a pretty crappy airport.  I took a Freedom Pat on the way back because I refuse to go through the backscatter machines and I wasn't in a hurry.  The TSA jerks gave me a hard time, but I was well within my rights.

I think I'll try to get back to DC next spring for cherry blossom season and to finish off the Mall.  Maybe I can get to Mount Vernon as well.  It's too bad my other cousin no longer lives in Arlington because then I could crash at his place.

You can find the picture vomit here.  I need to learn how to adjust the white balance since it was pretty sunny out.

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