We went off to Yorktown. The battle at Yorktown was a critical event in the life of the USA-to-be, but it’s hard to get a grasp of it on the site: it’s a battlefield memorial, with lots of old emplacements and remains but little life to it. There is a hideous monument put up after decades of procrastination by Congress, the shaft of which is of Maine granite (but we didn’t learn which quarry).
UPDATE: My diligent researcher brother John unearthed the mystery of the origin of the Maine granite:
“Monuments were a major source of income for the Hallowell Granite Works. The Pearson Monument shows the detail that
could be accomplished by using Hallowell’s fine-grained granite. Notable Granite Works monuments include the Pilgrim’s
monument, Plymouth, Massachusetts.; Soldiers’ monument, Boston Common, Stonewall Jackson monument, New Orleans,
Louisiana, George Pullman monument, Chicago Illinois, and the Yorktown Monument, Yorktown, Virginia.”http://www.mainememory.net/artifact/29251
And the Hallowell Granite Quarry is still in business.
On the way in to Yorktown we stopped first at the Virginia Victory Center, and yes Virginia, it is as bad as it sounds; if you ever go to Yorktown, give this a miss. The entire place, which is clearly well-funded, is aimed at the visitor with the maturity and knowledge of the average 10-year-old. We left early, and one of the staff was clearly so distraught that we would abandon their narrative in midstream that she said we would be missing the sunken ships in the basement (or somewhere…..); we thought that we all have enough sunken ships in our basements and left.
At the National Park Service site we took a short foot tour of the historic houses of Yorktown, and the NPS interpreter was terrific: great sense of humor, knowledgeable and with the capacity to blend past and present; a rare treat, as the visitor interpretive trade is often given to earnestness, or worse. He was right up there with the genuinely best of them.
We stopped for lunch (ocean scallops and crab cake) in a tavern down on the waterfront and saw speckled trout on the menu. I’ve been reading James Lee Burke novels for years, and hearing about speckled trout and this was as close as I’ve ever some to one (but I didn’t order it – Dan). Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about speckled trout.
A few more photos from Yorktown can be seen here. Note the Coast Guard buoy tender headed downstream behind that steel schooner.
Like much of the coastline we’ve seen so far, this country is FLAT. It’s lovely, but there is amazingly little relief. Navigation must be seriously complicated.
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