Our Historical Virginia Vacation (Part 2) + A Video!

// Read part 1 here.

Today I'm going to share pictures from our day in Lexington, Virginia, which is about an hour from Charlottesville. Jordan is reading a giant book on Stonewall Jackson and was excited to see his grave and visit his house. Also, at the end of this post there is a short (less than 2 minutes) video I put together of our Virginia trip!

R slept through the entire tour of the Stonewall Jackson house, which I was a little bitter about because I wished she had done that the day before when we were at Monticello (Thomas Jefferson's house). I don't think I mentioned that she started talking in the second room and got both of us kicked out of the tour. Little troublemaker. Jordan stayed and finished the tour while R and I wandered around outside the house for an hour. It's a good story to tell her when she's older, I guess.

Before arriving in Lexington, we drove an extra twenty minutes to Natural Bridge, Virginia, because I wanted to visit Foamhenge, a quirky roadside attraction I'd read about on the internet. You may remember Carhenge in Nebraska? Well, Foamhenge is the same thing but made out of foam! It was truly one of the weirdest things ever, and Jordan gave me a hard time about going so far out of the way to see something so strange. 

There was literally no entrance or any way to drive up to it. We could barely see it from the road, so Jordan pulled to the side and I ran up a hill to take this picture. It felt like the way horror movies start. I told him we need to see what other fake Stonehenge replicas we can find in the US to visit, because clearly now that we've seen two we need to see them all.

We looked on Trip Advisor to get eating suggestions for lunch, and since it was a Monday almost all the places were closed, so we had basically one option. R was perfect while we were eating! She just sat in a high chair and played. Don't get me started about the fact that she's big enough to sit in a high chair. 

It was a really nice day, which was good because we walked around all afternoon. (Although it was a tad chilly, hence R's hat. That and the fact that she gets more smiles from strangers when she's wearing it.) After the Stonewall Jackson house, we went over to the campus of the Virginia Military Institute (pictured below), where Stonewall Jackson taught. There is a statue of him there and a museum where they have his coat and some other things.

R did great for the most part. She slept her way through the entire tour of the Jackson home. She did have two poop explosions while we were in Lexington, the last one in the museum. We had one onesie left but no pants, so I covered her legs with my jacket while we walked back to the car. 

She started getting fussy when we went into another museum, so I sat outside with her on the grass while she played. And by played I mean that I ripped grass out of the ground and she watched it blow away in the wind when I threw a handful into the air. Seriously, why do we spend money buying babies toys? We are all such marketing suckers.

After the final poop explosion of the day, we drove back to Charlottesville, got hangry on the way, and had a fun little adventure trying to find somewhere to eat while getting lost multiple times in the downtown area. At one point the GPS had us trapped in an alleyway, and Jordan shook his fist in the air and said, "Curse you, Virginia!" I'm not making that up.

His phone was running on 3% battery, and since AT&T hates Virginia, my phone was useless. I couldn't have even texted for help. It was a close call, but we finally picked up dinner and made it back to our cabin just in time to feed R and put her to bed (and plug in Jordan's phone). The next day we visited Montpelier and went to the airport, where we sat around all day before finding out our plane was delayed and we would have to stay one more night in Virginia. It's a good thing I went into this vacation determined to be flexible if it killed me.

I have been inspired by a few blog friends (Charlotte and Miriam being two of them!) to take short videos and put them together into a video recap. I wish I would have taken more clips, but I had R strapped to me for most of the time, so it was harder to take pictures and videos than I anticipated. Nevertheless, I love looking back on this and seeing some of our vacation in this format! I hope you enjoy!

*I am working on a post about traveling/flying with a baby, so if you have any specific questions you want me to address, just let me know! Leave a comment or shoot me an email or find me on Facebook.