Had a terrific day today visiting the old Jamestown Colony site. I had to get up a bit early in order to do it, but all in all it was worth it. I left the trailer this morning at 9:30 in order to drive over to it from where I am just south of Suffolk. Because of the James River being in the way, my GPS, Emma, took me down through Newport News and then back towards the NW on Hwy 64.
   I was meeting a friend of mine there at 11:30 and despite driving to another "Jamestown" site first, we finally connected up at the real place with several minutes to spare. I should emphasize that we were at the "real" original site of the "real" original Jamestown today, and not next door to it where there is evidently a whole recreated Jamestown just waiting for you to show up and spend money. I'm not going to say that it isn't worth seeing that site because I haven't actually been there myself, but good god, they have reproductions of the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria docked there on the James River. Anybody want to tell what reproductions of the boats Columbus sailed on have to do with the Jamestown settlement? Jeez!
    But the real thing is pretty cool if that is what you like to look at, and for me it is. We wandered around some of the old ruins, there isn't really a lot of the original stuff left, just holes in the ground where they excavated, but there were signs to read and bits and pieces to look at.
   We did that for an hour or so but it soon felt like lunchtime, so we grabbed a sandwich and a beer at a little cafe there and took them outside to a table overlooking the James River. The sandwich was good, but the beer..... oh my did that go down well. A local beer brewed and bottled in Richmond, Legend Breweries signature Porter was pretty darn good.
   Another couple of hours looking through the actual Museum where many of the excavated items were on display took up the rest of the afternoon. Two items of interest stood out to me in looking and reading through all of the displays, the first was that there was cannibalism going on during at least one winter when the colonists ran out of food. They know this because of human bones they found that had signs of cut marks on them the same you would see if you were using a knife to cut up a steak with. With over 2/3rds of the colonists dying during that year it makes sense that people would get desperate. But one of the victims was a young 14+/- year old girl, no way to tell how she actually died, and another was the pregnant wife of one of the men who confessed to killing her. Just goes to show what hunger can be like at times.
    The other interesting fact was a little blurb that talked about where the saying 'bought it over the counter' comes from. It was known that the people of Jamestown, at least those that had some education, were as likely to use Roman Numerals, X V III etc, as they were to use Arabic ones, 1 2 3 etc. The use of Roman numbers made it hard to add, subtract or multiply or divide so a counting board was often used. A counting board was a flat piece of wood with 4 lines drawn on or etched into the top surface. They corresponded to 1, 10's, 100's and 1,000's and small buttons or coins were used as place holders, very much like an Abacus but easier for some reason. Merchants would have this counting board located on top of a flat surface so the beads wouldn't fall off, and all transactions would therefore be done 'over the counter'. Pretty cool uh!
   By the time we were through with all of that it was nearly time for the park to close so we headed into downtown Williamsburg where my friend, Brenda, knew of a pub we could get something cold to drink at. It turns out they also had ice cold 'Legend' beer there so after sipping one of those down we had a nice dinner along with one more beer. A short walk through part of old Williamsburg before we called it a day and I then headed back home to the trailer.
   There is an actual car ferry there near old Jamestown, so I drove over and got onto that without to much of a hassle. It crosses the James River and goes across every 30-40 mins, so it wasn't that long of a wait. The most pleasant surprise was finding that it is also free for some reason.
    It still took nearly an hour and a half to get home to Jessica, but most of it was in the light thankfully. I have to admit that I'm tired tonight. We did a fair amount of walking and my feet certainly hurt so tomorrow I think it will be time to go on a drive in search of Lighthouses. I will leave going back to Williamsburg until Friday at least.

*brk