Travelrific® Travel Journal
Picture postcards in prose.™ Check out the blogroll on the front page for official merchandise and other resources!Archive for virginia
Hamming It Up in Smithfield
By Linda Tancs
Virginia ham is deeply tied to the state’s history. That’s especially so in Smithfield, hailed as the “Ham Capital of the World.” You’ll learn all about that history at the Isle of Wight County Museum. Its biggest feature, though, is the “world’s oldest ham” cured in 1902. You can keep tabs on it through its own social media channel as well as the HamCam.
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Virginia’s Watermen Culture
By Linda Tancs
Known for its watermen culture (crabbing and oystering), Tangier Island is a car-free tourist’s gem in Virginia’s Chesapeake Bay. The remote island is only accessible via boat or ferry from Onancock or Reedville in Virginia or Crisfield, Maryland. The watermen lifestyle dates to colonial times, a period that many locals can trace in their ancestry. You can learn more about it at the Tangier Island History Museum. Be sure to sample the great seafood and crab cakes at any one of the numerous restaurants on the island and consider a crab shanty tour. Whatever you do, enjoy the experience of life in a quiet fishing village. Bikes and golf carts are available for rental.
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A Hall of Fame for Inventors
By Linda Tancs
With more than 600 inductees since its founding in 1973, the National Inventors Hall of Fame celebrates the best of American innovation. You’ll find each one commemorated at the Gallery of Icons, a hexagon patterned display organized by patent number. Other core exhibits feature the story of women in innovation as well as the evolution of wireless technology and automotive design. Located in Alexandria, Virginia, admission is free.
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Hampton Carousel
By Linda Tancs
Built in 1920, Hampton Carousel is a historic carousel housed in a pavilion, operated by the Hampton History Museum in Hampton, Virginia. One of few antique wooden merry-go-rounds still existing in the U.S., it still boasts its original mirrors and oil paintings, as well as 48 intricately decorated horses rising and falling to the strains of the original band organ. Open seasonally, it only costs one dollar to ride this precious piece of history!
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American Revolution Museum
By Linda Tancs
In time for America’s 250th anniversary, seize the Revolutionary spirit of the founding of a nation at Virginia’s American Revolution Museum at Yorktown. It tells the story of the nation’s founding, from the the colonial period to the dawn of the Constitution and beyond. Indoor galleries feature period artifacts, immersive environments and films. Outdoors, visit a re-created Continental Army encampment as well as a Revolution-era farm featuring period crops, a farmhouse and a separate log kitchen.
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The Stalacpipe Organ
By Linda Tancs
One of the largest caves in the eastern United States, Luray Caverns in Virginia features vast underground rooms connected by natural corridors and paved walkways adorned with vibrant rock formations. Its greatest boast, though, is the Great Stalacpipe Organ, a unique instrument that creates symphonic music from stalactites. Invented in 1954 by Leland Sprinkle, a mathematician and electronics engineer, it’s recognized by Guinness World Records as the world’s largest natural underground musical instrument. It spans over 3 acres of the caverns and is a lithophone, meaning it produces sound by striking objects (in this case, stalactites) with rubber-tipped mallets.
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The Spite House
By Linda Tancs
An iconic part of the architecture in Alexandria, Virginia, Spite House is the skinniest historic home in America at a mere seven feet wide and 325 square feet. Typically referred to as an alley house or a tiny house, the home earned its moniker because of the builder’s intentions. Seeking to block loiterers and carriages squeezing their way through the alley next to his house, John Hollensbury built the structure in 1830. A popular tourist attraction, you’ll find it at 523 Queen Street.
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Freedom’s Fortress
By Linda Tancs
Positioned on a 565-acre peninsula known as Old Point Comfort, Fort Monroe National Monument in Hampton, Virginia, is known as “Freedom’s Fortress.” That’s because, due to a legal loophole, thousands of enslaved Africans escaped and found refuge there during the Civil War. Strategically located at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, it was a key defensive site. The site’s military history is chronicled at the Casemate Museum. Buildings of note include the oldest house (Building #1, Old Quarters), where Abraham Lincoln stayed while planning the attack on Norfolk in 1862, and Building #17, where Robert E. Lee and his family stayed while he was a young engineer helping to oversee the construction of the fort. The peninsula is also home to Old Point Comfort Lighthouse, the second-oldest light in the bay and the oldest still in use.
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America’s National Maritime Museum
By Linda Tancs
Designated by Congress as America’s National Maritime Museum, The Mariners’ Museum and Park in Newport News, Virginia, is one of the largest and most comprehensive maritime museums in the world. In fact, the museum’s library contains the largest maritime history collection in the Western Hemisphere. One of its most iconic features is the USS Monitor, representing the world’s largest marine archaeological metals conservation project. More than 210 tons of material were excavated from the ship’s wreck site in the depths of the Atlantic. Historically significant objects recovered include the revolving gun turret, two Dahlgren guns and the steam propulsion engine. You can get a bird’s-eye view of the conservation efforts from the observation platform at the Batten Conservation Complex. Leave some time to visit the 550-acre park which features the award-winning 5-mile Noland Trail that surrounds the 167-acre Mariners’ Lake.
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Colonial Williamsburg
By Linda Tancs
Located in Williamsburg, Virginia, Colonial Williamsburg is the world’s largest living-history museum. The historic 301-acre campus includes 89 original buildings and more than 500 meticulous re-creations of lost structures as well as two world-class art museums under one roof. The former colonial capital features the reconstructed Raleigh Tavern, where patriot members of Virginia’s House of Burgesses met and cast votes during the Revolutionary era in defiance of the colony’s royal governors, whose palace is open for tours. Across the vast site you’ll find costumed, informative staff as well as the interpreting of colonial crafts like cabinetmaking, blacksmithing, silversmithing, spinning and weaving, barbering and wigmaking, and candlemaking.
