Road Trip to Viriginia! (Day 5-6)

October 15, 2012 (Monday)

Yorktown National Battlefield

The plan for the day was to visit Yorktown. We headed to the Yorktown National Battlefield (part of Colonial National Historical Park) first. Yorktown Battlefield (1781) was where General George Washington oversaw American and French troops besiege General Cornwallis’s British army. Cornwallis surrendered, which pretty much ended the war and gave America independence.

There is a $10 fee to enter the park (valid for 7 days and good at Jamestown National Park Site, free if under 15 or have a National Parks Pass), payable at the visitor center. The visitor center shows a short 15 minute informational video and there is a small display area with some hands on stuff for kids. From the visitor center, we walked over to the Yorktown Settlement area, it is a mix of homes. There is a Victory Monument in the settlement area. Yorktown was a hot spot for tobacco trade prior to the war and had a peak population of around 2000 residents.

There are two auto tours of the battlefields. We only had time to do one of the loops – the Battlefield Tour Road. If you stop at all the stops it will take about an hour. Along the tour you will see earthworks, rebounds, the place where the treaty was signed, and a cemetery. The second auto tour is called the Encampment Tour Road, which apparently takes only about 30 minutes to get through.

Along the battlefield and in the village, there are buildings open to the public, refer to the schedule at the visitor center. Park rangers also offer walking tours and battlefield tours. Nothing was open or offered in a time that worked for us.

Yorktown Victory Center

Our next stop was the Yorktown Victory Center, part of the ticket package we paid for the previous day.  This site is composed of both indoor and outdoor activities. Outdoors there is a Continental Army encampment set up as well as a re-created 1780’s farm. Artillery demonstrations are provided in the encampment area.  Indoors there is an 18 minute film. There are a lot of gallery exhibits. Allow approximately two hours at the site.

Out of the two above mentioned sites, it is really a toss up to which one was preferred.  If time were a factor I suppose I would pick the Battlefield site. It started to rain in the afternoon so we pretty much just hung out for the remainder of the day.

October 16, 2012 (Tuesday)

We headed out early to return home. It was quite weird…all along we had expected a twelve hour drive home, but then our GPS system told us it would only be 10.5 hours! We got stuck in some DC traffic so that added 30 minutes to our return time.