Colonial Williamsburg, VA

Back here on the East Coast, I've discovered that Colonial Williamsburg is exceptionally fun. If I have the story right, the town was pretty much a mess in the 1930s, with many buildings in disrepair or ruined. J.D. Rockefeller Jr partnered with a local minister to buy up a bunch of the town and fund restoration of 88 original colonial buildings, and then funded a trust to reconstruct about twice that many. Now it's like a huge theme park, except that it is in and around peoples' homes. I found it fascinating. I ended up staying in the area two full days (well, I went to Jamestown too, but didn't make it to the third big history site, Yorktown). I could see coming back here for another several days at some point, there's so much history there to learn about!

The company running Colonial Williamsburg is exceptionally fussy about authenticity, and the place is swarming with costumed actors with history degrees. Several times each day there are scripted programs and it is rather like a progressive play -- where the audience must move from building to building to follow the whole sequence. On my second day I hooked up with one of the sound technicians and got a "backstage" tour. The whole neighborhood is rigged with a wireless sound system, with a different frequency for each major performance area. As the actors move from one area to the next they have to switch receiver packs (a drawback in the setup), but the sound techs just carry around a briefcase with a wireless sound board about the size of a small tablet PC. There are two techs who leapfrog coverage of the different acting venues. In addition to the techs, there's one production manager on the grounds keeping an eye on the whole shebang. What fun!

I parked the van last night in the Colonial Williamsburg motel parking lot to save some cash (to keep a low profile I didn't even pop the van top -- man, it was stuffy inside!) and snuck out of the parking lot right at dawn. After driving much of the day along the Blue Ridge Parkway, tonight I'm at a campground a bit outside of Asheville NC, and will swing through there tomorrow. I'm a bit behind my original schedule, but who's keeping track ;)

Photos

p.s. Thanks, Matt! I enjoyed the tour.