Yorktown Journal

We slowed down on our fourth day in the Historic Triangle of Jamestown, Williamsburg and Yorktown. We did not get out until just before 10am. Our energy was just flagging a bit. Everything was just a bit off in the morning. The tour we waited a long time for was so dry we ducked out after 15 minutes and wandered down to a beach.

We were hot and hungry after the beach but neither the Yorktown Pub nor The Delly looked promising.

Me: Kids, we're having Ben and Jerry's for lunch!
Greta: Yuuuuuuck!
Clem: Greta, that's ice cream.
Greta: Oh. Yuuuuuum!

Finally around 2pm we rolled into the Yorktown Victory Center. And then I wished that we hadn't lolled around most of the day. There were lots of new things to see. The kids perked up right away.

Clementine got to be the artillery captain in a demonstration and shout the commands. Evelyn enjoyed the fire starting demonstration. I was impressed by the camp kitchen: a circular trench with holes dug into the walls, each hole like a small cave with a hole through the top.

Soldiers built a fire in the cavity and put their pots and pans over the hole. This kept the cooking fires contained so they didn't start tent fires. Greta ground some resin into powder with a mortar and pestle in the doctor's tent. You can see the three girls standing in a tent. A tent like that would have slept six.

The kitchen interpreter passed around a piece of hard tack. This bread had quite a shelf life. She said that when the nation was preparing for the war of 1812 soldiers discovered a storehouse of hard tack left over from the battle of Yorktown in 1781. Not ones to waste, they passed out the 30 year old hockey pucks to the new recruits.

I thought back to our decadent lunch. What an unimaginable luxury it would have been to Revolutionary War Soldiers camped out here 233 years ago.