This is a rare domestic trip entry on the blog, but after eight months of our not leaving Ohio at all because of the pandemic, Virginia feels exotic! It’s our spring break, and I decided to take Meredith on a mystery trip. I plugged in “Eight-hour drive from Akron,” and Google gave me a map radius and a few destinations. One of those was Williamsburg. To my knowledge (which turned out to be correct), Meredith had never been, and neither had I. There seemed to be a ton of stuff to do in the area, so Williamsburg it was.

Funny how you forget how to do some things, like packing. Mer wisely uses a list, but even she forgot her toothpaste (I remembered mine, so all was well). Me, not so good. I forgot my pillow and my neck massager (to help with my regular neck issues), and, more seriously, I managed to forget my computer. I actually remembered to bring my printer (to print off tickets and maps and such), but no computer. Genius. I was reduced to using my car-only smart phone on wi-fi, and it drove me into such a rage at using it, I ordered a computer from Amazon. How anyone uses a phone for any non-emergency is beyond me. It definitely firmed up my position on not ever carrying a phone. Sheesh.

Anyway, the trip to Virginia was uneventful, although the eight-hour trip took us nine-and-a-half hours for some reason. We didn’t hit traffic until the last three miles, and we only stopped for a fast-food lunch, so we’re not sure where the time went. We are staying on a small farm that has rooms in the main house, as well as two very nice cabins on the property, and I booked us into a cabin as splurge, since we had not been traveling much in the last fifteen months. The cabin has a porch and rocking chairs, so evenings have been spent eating chocolates and watching cows.

Sunday was supposed to have rain in the morning and afternoon, but had a window from ten to two of no rain. I took the forecast at its word, and drove us, in the rain, to Richmond, to go to the Richmond Botanical Gardens. It stopped raining as we approached Richmond. Go, weather service! As an added bonus, we are members of Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens in Akron, and they have reciprocal admission with about three hundred gardens around the country, so we got into the gardens for free.

The gardens are a great size, especially with rain threatening in the afternoon – about fifty acres, and it took us a little over three hours to walk them all. The conservatory mirrors the welcome center, framing an arbor and a dancing fountain. At the bottom of the hill is a large pond used as a retention basin for another nearby lake, and the shore was awash in colors from daffodils and flowering trees. There is a woods section with more flowering trees, and a Japanese garden with a large tea house next to a waterfall, where we had a pleasant outdoor lunch.

Just as we finished the gardens, it began to rain slightly, so we hurried back to the car and drove off to our next destination, the rain-proof Poe Museum in downtown Richmond. Richmond is the city where Poe spent the most time, and it has the largest collection of Poe memorabilia, which is not overwhelming – it fits into three buildings, built around a courtyard garden. It is an excellent museum, especially if your wife teaches Poe, which mine happens to do. Mer was excited. Plus, the museum has two black cats, like those Poe describes in one story, and they were born on or around Halloween. Poe AND kitties – I scored a big win.

The museum used the artifacts to tell of Poe’s early life, his writing, and the mystery surrounding his death (he died four days after being found in a Baltimore gutter, wearing someone else’s clothes, and he was unable to recover sufficiently to tell anyone what had happened). It brought out in stark relief how many people, especially women, died around Poe – his mother, his first love, his wife, and others. The writing section showed how Poe largely invented the detective story, and wrote science fiction as well as updating the horror genre from Gothic tales to psychological ones.

And, as an added bonus, the rain had stopped when we came out. We used the unexpectedly dry weather to take a walk down by the James River, and up to a monument on a hill (the Confederate statue at the top had been taken down, but the monolith was still there), and then through a residential neighborhood to get back to the car. Nothing spectacular, but a nice walk.

We drove back to Williamsburg, and used the fine evening to wander around the campus of William and Mary, which is much bigger than I had guessed. We spent almost two hours walking around the bulk of the campus. It is very pretty, with all the buildings made of brick, and we found out the college was founded over three hundred years ago, which is saying something in North America.

We went back to our cabin, where we watched the cows join us at home, and went to bed after a happy day of touring.