Our Historical Virginia Vacation (Part 2) + A Video!

// Read part 1 here.

Today I'm going to share pictures from our day in Lexington, Virginia, which is about an hour from Charlottesville. Jordan is reading a giant book on Stonewall Jackson and was excited to see his grave and visit his house. Also, at the end of this post there is a short (less than 2 minutes) video I put together of our Virginia trip!

R slept through the entire tour of the Stonewall Jackson house, which I was a little bitter about because I wished she had done that the day before when we were at Monticello (Thomas Jefferson's house). I don't think I mentioned that she started talking in the second room and got both of us kicked out of the tour. Little troublemaker. Jordan stayed and finished the tour while R and I wandered around outside the house for an hour. It's a good story to tell her when she's older, I guess.

Before arriving in Lexington, we drove an extra twenty minutes to Natural Bridge, Virginia, because I wanted to visit Foamhenge, a quirky roadside attraction I'd read about on the internet. You may remember Carhenge in Nebraska? Well, Foamhenge is the same thing but made out of foam! It was truly one of the weirdest things ever, and Jordan gave me a hard time about going so far out of the way to see something so strange. 

There was literally no entrance or any way to drive up to it. We could barely see it from the road, so Jordan pulled to the side and I ran up a hill to take this picture. It felt like the way horror movies start. I told him we need to see what other fake Stonehenge replicas we can find in the US to visit, because clearly now that we've seen two we need to see them all.

We looked on Trip Advisor to get eating suggestions for lunch, and since it was a Monday almost all the places were closed, so we had basically one option. R was perfect while we were eating! She just sat in a high chair and played. Don't get me started about the fact that she's big enough to sit in a high chair. 

Our Historical Virginia Vacation (Part 1)

Let me first thank you to everyone who read and responded to my post on Monday! It felt good to finally finish that and share some of my thoughts, and I'm glad so many of you resonated with it.

Now for something much more fun! On Saturday, March 19, Jordan, R, and I left for our first family vacation.

We chose Charlottesville, Virginia, as our destination for four days and had a great time! I am going to save all my thoughts about traveling/flying with a baby for a separate post and just share some pictures and highlights from our trip. We bought plane tickets just two months ago, which is pretty spur-of-the-moment for us. (You might be interested to know How We Budget For Travel.) One day in January I decided I wanted to go on vacation. Our five-year anniversary is coming up in May, R can fly for free and is in a generally good mood most of the time so I figured she would do okay, and I felt like I just wanted to get away for a little change of pace.

(Montpelier, home of President James Madison)

I asked Jordan where he wanted to go, and he said "somewhere out east." So I spent an hour plugging flights and dates into Kayak. I randomly chose airports and dates until I narrowed it down to a few of the cheapest options (cheap being both of us flying for under $500 total). Then I let Jordan pick. He is a huge history buff and got really excited when I said Charlottesville, Virginia, because that is the home of Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's house. (Below)

There are also two president homes nearby (James Monroe and James Madison), and for an added bonus, Lexington is just a few hours away, which is the home of Stonewall Jackson (I'm sharing all our pictures from our day in Lexington in a separate post). Basically you might say this trip was a tour of old, dead, white guy houses and graves, and Jordan was in historical heaven. He loved every minute! R and I had fun watching him have fun and just went along for the ride.

Jordan and I both enjoyed seeing a part of the country that is so old and historical. Virginia is absolutely beautiful with rolling hills and houses set back on large plots of land. It was easy to imagine a few hundred years ago when many of those houses were operational plantations and such. Of course, since we are just coming out of winter, a lot of the trees are still mostly dead, but many of them were starting to bloom with these really pretty yellow, white, and purple buds. We also got a hint of those famous apple blossom trees! (I think that's what they were...)

Amazingly, I did not get motion sick while driving on those twisty roads, but that's probably because I sat straight forward and didn't look at my phone or read or anything else. Oklahoma is so flat and all our streets are on a grid, so it was very different to drive down roads that curved and went up and down so much. And the trees! So many tall trees all around. We had a great time just driving to the different destinations on our itinerary and seeing the scenery.

Jordan really wants to go back to Virginia and hit some spots we missed during our trip. I booked us a cabin via Air B&B in Ivy, which is next to Charlottesville, and we basically stayed within a two-hour radius to the south/west. 

There are places up north that Jordan wanted to see but we didn't have time for, so maybe in the future we can head back to Virginia and see those! I would also love to see Washington DC at some point. Travel goals and such.

We left OKC at noon on Saturday, March 19, and arrived home at noon on Wednesday, March 23. (We were supposed to come home on Tuesday, but our flight was delayed and we had to stay an extra day.)

Here was our itinerary:

Saturday: 12pm flight OKC --> Wash DC --> Charlottesville, Virginia (arrived at 6pm)
Sunday: Monticello (home of Thomas Jefferson), Michie's Tavern, Ashlawn-Highland (home of James Monroe)
Monday: Lexington (home of Stonewall Jackson), Natural Bridge (Foamhenge)
Tuesday: Montpelier (home of James Madison) / supposed to fly home; spent all day in the airport, went back to Charlottesville and stayed in a Holiday Inn Express
Wednesday: 5am flight out of Virginia --> Chicago, O'hara --> Dallas, Texas --> OKC

So those were scenes from days one and two! I will share pictures from Lexington in an upcoming post, and I also took a bunch of short videos during our trip and want to put together a little vacation recap video. Then, I am putting all my thoughts specifically about traveling/flying with a baby in another post! Thanks for reading!

See also: Part 2 of our trip (plus a vacation video)
Traveling with a Baby: Everything You Need to Know

Have you ever been to Virginia?
What is your favorite United States historical site?
How far in advance would you consider a spur-of-the-moment vacation?