Dan and Vicki Coyote Travels

Virginia: Jamestown, Yorktown, a Concert and a Swamp.

Trip report #7 Sept 28-29, 2018

Jamestown, Virginia

On December 6, 1606, the journey to Virginia began on three ships: the Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery. In 1607, 104 English men and boys arrived in North America at Chesapeake Bay to start a settlement. On May 13, they picked Jamestown, Virginia for their settlement, naming it after their King, James I. The settlement became the first permanent, successful English settlement in North America. These pictures are from the museum, which includes replicas of the Powhatan Pocahontas’ village and the three ships that brought the colonists. We were surprised how small they were. Dan visits with one of the sailors.

The Jamestown Visitor Center exhibits are well done and the surrounding reenactments, interpreters, and replicas are informative. However, the actual historic site is a mile or two further on from the visitor center, but just a few building foundations and a church tower remain.

Incidentally, John Smith did not marry Pocahontas. Peace, for a while, existed between the Powhatan Indians and the English, brought about by the conversion and marriage of Pocahontas (kidnapped by the English in 1613) and John Rolfe in 1614. (Always learning something new).

Yorktown, Virginia

Yorktown is just a few miles across the peninsula from Jamestown. If you’ll recall on my commentary of our visit to Pennsylvania; in Philadelphia we relived the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776… the beginning of the Revolutionary War. Now here we are five years later in 1781 in Yorktown. At Yorktown, in the fall of 1781, General George Washington, with allied American and French forces, besieged General Charles Lord Cornwallis’s British army. On October 19, Cornwallis surrendered, effectively ending the war and ensuring independence. The pictures are of the army encampment and from the museum. Notice the woman working the cannon. They do museums very well here. Wish I could bring my history students here … lesson done.

Newport News Park

The campground was lovely, nearly empty and provided easy access to Jamestown and Yorktown. Located in Newport News, Virginia, the park is the largest park in the system of municipal parks maintained by the Newport News Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism. At 8,065 acres, it is one of largest city-run parks in the United States of which 143 acres are set aside for camping.

Concert on the Riverfront.

Yorktown has concerts on the Riverwalk Landing and luckily, we were there that Saturday night. Classical Jazz Big Band music along with a spectacular sunset brought a wonderful end to the day and to these beautiful cities. Note in the picture, the Coleman Bridge over the York River at the right.

Dismal Swamp Canal

The next morning we leave Virginia heading south along highway 17 and parallel the Dismal Swamp Canal. This is one of the scenic byways we found in that National Geographic Scenic Byways book. It’s called the Tidewater Byway.

If you peer into the still, mirrored waters of the Dismal Swamp Canal, you may see a brief glimpse of the historic Waterway’s colorful past. Indians, Civil War Soldiers and runaway freedom seekers each have their own story to share. The vast Dismal Swamp, once covering over a million acres, is still a large, complex, beautiful natural area with many reasons to visit. The Dismal Swamp State Park and Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge are home to one of the largest Black Bear populations on the East Coast, subtropical birds, butterflies, bobcats and white-tailed deer. It runs through southern Virginia and northern North Carolina. It is the oldest continually operating man-made canal in the United States, opened in 1805. It is part of the Intracoastal Waterway, an inland route, which parallels the east coast.