Jamestown

Jamestown Virginia is where the first British Colony was established 400 years ago. Sunday morning we drove over and went to what they explain as an 'outdoor museum' where they have Indian homes set up and ships like the ones the colonists would have rode over on and also a Colony set up. You can walk through all of it and touch and play with all of the displays. They also have people walking around or 'working' in period clothes and on period tasks. It was so cool! The indian encampment had corn that you could try mashing into corn-meal or flour (1st picture) and then inside each hut there were all sorts of furs (2nd picture) and things set up just as it had been. What I personally thought was really cool was that you could try tanning a hide (3rd picture). You used what looked like half of a large clam shell and scraped the fur off- it was time consuming but it really worked and the children really enjoyed trying it...and I'm not gonna lie, I enjoyed it too! Then we went down and toured the ship which was...well, a little short on square footage for the amount of time people lived on those things (4th picture). I got nauseous just thinking about an extended period of time in the belly of one of those things. Finally we toured the colony and saw a blacksmith, a guy fire a musket (10 gauge if you are wondering) and my personal favorite, Kohen trying on real 'dungeons' (picture 5) which he then refused to take off. He had other tourists laughing cuz he was struttin' around in his dungeons, barely able to see out from under the helmet and he was using this gruff voice pretending to slay dragons or some make-believe antagonist, with a grand finale of purposely knocking his head against the wall with his helmet on. Man, he had some lady laughing- classic Kohen. Such a cool place. I just felt this reverence while we were there thinking how amazing it is how this country ever came to be and it was actually really special to see where it all started.