Vacation Day 1

We decided to write about each day of our vacation so we wouldn't forget any of it. So now we have a week's worth of posts that we'll be able to put up here whenever we want! I think for the most part we alternated writing each day. Feel free to be jealous of our adventuring.

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May 29th, Day 1
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Vacation! Today has been extremely sleepy for some reason. I think we've been working ourselves up for an awesome, well-needed vacation for so long that, now that it's here, our bodies just immediately went into chill and relax mode as soon as the Happy Day arrived. Couple that with the five or six, warm and scenic hours in the car, an early morning rising and full stomachs (which I will mention in a bit) and, well, you get two sleepy people arriving in Williamsburg, Virginia. But I've already jumped ahead. Rewind time.

We were planning on going to church this morning before heading out but miscalculated our itinerary. We figured we could go to church, get out at 10, drop by our apartment to pick up our food items and cooler, and be able to make it to Fredericksburg, Virginia by 1 pm. For some reason, we thought our first stop was only 2-1/2 hours away. Upon googling it last night, however, we discovered it was closer to 3 hours away, which sadly nixed our church plans.  Why did we want to reach Fredericksburg by 1? What was so important about getting there at such a specific time? I will answer this with another question: Would you want to miss a date with Marth?

That's right, people, Jason and I had a 1 o'clock date with Marth. We like him. He's a good fellow. We were excited. We didn't want to keep him waiting for us. So, we packed up the car and headed out right on time, our GPS telling us that we would probably arrive about 15 minutes early. (Let me just add here that we packed near perfect. As of now, the only thing we can think of that we forgot to bring was something we just hadn't thought to bring in the first place: sandwich bags for carrying lunch PBJs. I think that's pretty good packing...) Of course, even the best-timed trip can completely collapse with a simple accident on a busy interstate. This is what happened to us. Crawling along a 4-lane interstate at the rate of idling set us back a good 25 minutes.

It turns out that the number of games you can play while stuck in a non-moving car with other mostly-non-moving cars surrounding you is pretty limited. I settled on a potentially racist-sounding game of calling out the skin color of the occupants of each car that passed us. I realize I could have chosen any other trait to call out, but I felt like skin color would be the easiest. Calling out genders would have been difficult because of multiple occupants in a given car. It would be too much to keep up with. Age grouping would also be affected by the number of occupants and would also be too subjective. So, I settled on skin color. No, I am not racist. Promise. I thought it was neat how, after calling out 30 different cars, my brain started compiling a mental pie chart of the skin color ratios. It was interesting (though odd, I know) and passed some time, but Jason eventually got tired of hearing "Dark/light/black/white!"

We hit another patch of traffic at some point and were then predicted to arrive in Fredericksburg at 1:35, which turned out to be pretty accurate. I don't know why I'm rambling on about traffic. I will move on. We successfully meet with Marth and his sister at Olive Garden and partake in a generously paid-for meal, courtesy of the same. I feel like we are not much for lunch companions, but overall we enjoyed ourselves. I sure hope we didn't bore the 2 of them... Jason received his long-anticipated hug from the Tall Blonde One (and gave the inevitable compliments of "you smell good as always" directly following said hug) and we parted ways. It was a good stop. Good date. Marth's a brick. (I've always wanted to call someone a brick, and I think Marth merits the title.)

Onto Williamsburg! I don't remember what time we arrived here, but it was oh so welcome turning into Williamsburg Plantation Resort, where we will be staying for the next week. Let me mention here how awesome the drive was down here. The trees lined the interstate all the way down, with a few breaks (such as when we passed through a small section of D.C.) and it was just perfectly gorgeous. Absolutely gorgeous. I can't even describe. As we drove the last couple of miles to the resort, we were hoping and hoping that the trees would continue to dominate the scenery, even once we reached our destination. You know how it is, prettiness often abounds until you reach the city-fied area and then the beauty just abruptly disappears. I dislike this. I am proud to say, however, that this is not the case with our current vacation residence. It is nature-esqe and serene all the way up to the Plantation. It is perfect. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that our entire vacation will be filled with forest-lined roads and nature-filled scenes (even maybe atthe amusement park and water park, please...?).

We have a 2 bed/2 bath, 2nd floor suite. It is decorated in a very dated, themed manner. The decor isn't fancy or extravagant, but it accomplishes what it's supposed to. The rooms are nicely sized, the kitchen is well-stocked with appliances and utensils, and our master bathroom is ridiculously awesome. Our balcony looks out over a yard-ish area with a few trees, and I'm pretty sure there's a bird nest up in the corner above the sliding door. While I'm sure plantations of old didn't have a television set in every main room, the atmosphere of our place is perfect. I'm 100% sure we're going to love spending the next 7 days here. The only down-side to our place is that we're on the 2nd floor and, thus, have to limit our boundings and jumpings and dancing about out of consideration for the residents below us. Plus, it was quite the task hauling our bikes up the flight of stairs. But, no other complaints.

So, that's where we stand so far. We've made it down here safely and we've unpacked the car. We have eaten lunch leftovers for dinner, read for a while, and puzzled an appropriately named puzzle "Carefree Days" by Jane Wooster Scott. We are now sleepily trying to plan our day for tomorrow.

It's going to be a good, good week.