Day 2: Williamsburg, Pt. 1

Monday did not start out as we had envisioned it. Overnight, around 12:30am Nolan woke up crying. When I checked on him I saw he had thrown up in his bed. Typically, someone throwing up isn’t a huge deal, however we (particularly Allyson) are sensitive to anyone throwing up on vacation. This is because several years ago we were in Northern Michigan and everyone except Allyson ended up throwing up on our trip. Sam was just a baby so her throwing up on that trip became a major concern.

But we survived that trip and we’ll survive this one.

We got Nolan and his bed all cleaned up and got him back to sleep. Then two hours later Julia fell out of the top bunk. There is an overhead bunk above the front seats that we drop down and recently have had Julia and Sam sleep on. Julia had been sleeping on the bed by herself for a couple years. There is a net up there to keep kids from falling off. The net doesn’t strike me as terribly robust, however it has never broken. The bed is over four feet off the floor, so if someone were to roll off the bed and break through the net they could get seriously hurt. We’ve had several (I think three) instances of kids “falling out of the bed”. However, I think what’s happening is they are trying to get down in the night and in their sleepy fog they’ve fallen off the ladder. Even if that is what is happening it is surely still painful to fall, and when we hear the noise it’s a big commotion to understand what happened and make sure they are ok. Julia would end up being fine, but we decided to not use this bed anymore this trip.

With that settled Allyson and I laid back down, although we barely got anymore sleep. I dozed off for a little bit but I think Allyson just stayed up. It really wouldn’t matter because Nolan would be up very early in the morning. It was not a great way to start the trip. It felt like the days when you have a newborn and you’re constantly exhausted but you have all this stuff to do and responsibilities you can’t put off.

Eventually we all got up and ate breakfast. The plan for the day was to take the bus over to downtown Williamsburg and see what we wanted to do. There are several main tourist attractions in the area, but we weren’t sure which ones would be best to do with all the kids. Getting downtown was fairly easy on the bus. It picked us up right at our campground and 20 minutes later we were at the Williamsburg Transportation Center. It was fun to see the girls on the bus. I don't know if they've ever ridden a public bus. They've ridden school buses and the subway, but never a bus, so it was fun to see their excitement.

Once we were off the bus we set off on foot to figure out where to go. Things were a bit touchy for a few minutes. We weren’t sure where to go, it was already hot, Nolan was freaking out, and Mom and Dad were on limited sleep. There may have been some discussions on the sidewalk that would have been better to have in private. But what can you do. It’s a vacation with kids 🤷🏼‍♂️.

We made our way over to Merchants Square which was a nice, pedestrian-only, market place. It wasn’t as good as St. George Street in St. Augustine, but it was pretty good. We kept walking down the street and eventually made our way into Colonial Williamsburg. The set up here is a tad confusing. You can actually walk through just about all of Colonial Williamsburg for free, but if you want to go into any of the old houses or buildings you need a ticket. Caroline loves history and was very excited to see Williamsburg so we knew we’d be getting tickets.

We went into several buildings while making our way over to the capital. We went to the Apothecary, Coffee Shop, and a couple others. The shops were air conditioned which was a godsend for not just us, but these employees who were all dressed in the clothing of that era.

The Capitol building was a main attraction along with the Governors Palace. The downside to both was that you couldn’t walk through at your own pace, but instead were given a group tour. At the Capitol our tour guide was a young woman who seemed keen on impressing us with her knowledge and theatrics. It really drew out the tour and quickly drained all participants of their interest. After a couple rooms we decided to split and head on to more stuff.

We didn’t have too much more to see which was good because it was very hot and the girls were all getting tired. We stopped at the jail (or gaol) and then the Governors Palace. When the girls saw that the palace was another tour they decided to pass on it so we made our way to the bus stop to head back to the campground.

The trip back to the campground on the buses was a bit of a pain. We didn’t want to make the kids walk a ton more so we waited for a bus to pick us up near the Governors Palace. It took a while but we eventually got on a very crowded bus, with a very intense driver, that took us back to the transportation center. Once we got there we learned we had to wait 40 minutes to take the bus back to our campground. The station we were at was also an Amtrak stop so they had bathrooms, A/C, and vending machines that we used to pacify the kids.

We eventually got on the bus and back to the campground. Everyone was relieved to be able to relax in the A/C. After about an hour we went over to the pool. Nolan was a pain there so I took him for a walk and then we went back to the motorhome early to prep for dinner while the ladies hung out at the pool.

When everyone got back we ate dinner and ran the kids through the shower. Everyone was pretty tired so we began winding down for bed early. The US was playing Belgium at 8pm so we all hung out and watched that as we transitioned one kid after another into bed.

Looking back on the day I’m pretty pleased with how well all the kids did today. Some of the historical stuff isn’t very interesting for very little kids, and it was very hot and sticky. But they all did very well and allowed us all to have a nice time in Williamsburg. We’ll see how they hold up tomorrow.