Day 13- Friday Monticello

We packed up and headed back West on Friday morning. Our destination was Charleston, WV, but we stopped in Charlottesville, VA to go to Monticello.

We went to get tickets at the counter. The lady asked how old the kids were. She said, "kids are 5-11, adults are 12 and over." She went on to say, "I see you have two adults and one child. I'm unsure about the other one." Not a big deal unless you know the difference in ticket prices. Adult tickets were $22 and kids were $8. I knew what I should say, I knew what I wanted to say and I knew I had little ears listening. So, the frugal mom who hates to pay full price for anything (they didn't even have a AAA discount!), said "12". Man, that hurt.

The burial plot of Thomas Jefferson at his estate, Monticello, in Charlottesville, VA





This is a shot of the back of Monticello. No pictures were allowed inside.

Another angle of Thomas Jefferson's tombstone. There is a big fence around it, so this is as close as you can get.
When sitting here, Cole looked out and said, "Gosh, this is beautiful."

This is a machine that makes silhouettes of people. Cole could look through it and see Drew.




Thomas Jefferson's gardens. Now, the employees of Monticello get to take home all of the produce. What a nice benefit.



We took the shuttle up to the top of the hill/mountain. The grounds were spectacular. By present day standards, the house was really big and lovely, but not presidential. Our tour guide seemed to really love Jefferson and the whole era. They don't let you take pictures inside the house. :( After the tour, we snapped a few pictures and then, surprise...went to the gift shop. We made it out of this one with just drinks and some hard candy sticks. We had the option of taking the shuttle back down or walking on a trail down. If you walk on the trail, you get to see Jefferson's burial site. We opted for the walk. This sounds weird, but the cemetary was really cool. The tombstones were really pretty.

Back at the visitor's center, we walked through another museum of Jefferson stuff before we loaded back in the car and headed for West Virginia. It was another 4 hours from Charlottesville to Charleston.

We stopped in a town called Covington, WV. We saw a restaurant "Cucci's" that had a million cars, so we decided to stop there for dinner. The million cars were right! It was so good and so reasonable. It was one of those places were everybody in there knew everybody else. There was a baby that seemed to get passed from table to table. Nobody could make that baby happy, but nobody really seemed to care. Drew ordered a piece of chocolate cake. I took a bite, and then another and raved about how good it was. Drew was eating it as fast as he could. Scott tried to get in on the action, but he only ended up with a bite, so he was bitter. He said he didn't want any, but he always has a fork ready. He was mad because the lady had taken his fork. So, I suggested we try the lemon cake. The server brought us a piece of the lemon cake. We ate it like we hadn't ever had dessert. It was SO good. We raved about it and asked the server if it was made there homemade. She said, "nope, it comes out of a box from Roma." Good grief, another person thinking we'd never been to a restaurant before. We were going crazy for frozen cake out of a box.

We made it to Charleston. Did you know it is the capitol of West Virginia? I took a picture of the Capitol building. It was about 2 blocks from our hotel and really pretty at night. I figured most people I know will never go there, so now you'll know what it looks like. It was the only part of Charleston that we saw that was desirable.

I finished reading, "Room" by Emma Donoghue. It was really good and I would recommend it. I've moved onto, "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett. It's really good so far too. I'm about half way through it now.