Sat March 18, 2023

Road video and map

My friends and I have decided to meet in Atlanta for spring break this year. They are flying but I am making it a short road trip. I will travel south mainly east of interstate 95 and return through the mountains west of I 95. Today I traveled along I 95 to Colonial Heights, VA, about 20 miles south of Richmond, making a couple of stops along the way.

The first was in Fredericksburg, a small historic town mid way between Washington and Richmond. Founded in early colonial times its famous residents included George Washington and his family who encouraged Hugh Mercer (a revolutionary war general who had received medical training in Aberdeen, Scotland) to open a practice in the town. This practice has been recreated at the Hugh Mercer Apothecary Shop where period costumed nurses show and explain to visitors the treatments of the day for many common ailments.

The two main rooms were the dispensary, where we were shown the ingredients and how to make pills, salves and potions, and the consulting room where procedures were performed. Some of the procedures described were fixing broken bones, tooth extraction, amputation and bloodletting using leeches.

It was a short, but interesting, visit and I just beat sharing my tour with a school group that arrived 5 minutes before I left.

Talking of school field trips; back in the 90s the science department at my school began organizing an annual field trip to Florida for our 10th grade students and, in those early days, we traveled by bus. The first stop was always the Virginia Museum of Science in Richmond which had plenty of hands on, interactive exhibits. I have often wondered what it’s like now so I decided to pay a visit. I was pleased to find that it has kept up with the times and still provides interactive activities and good explanations often using modern technology. I was disappointed to find that one of the favorite demonstrations, a 1 million volt Van de Graaff generator, had been retired but they still have hourly demonstrations of various phenomena and the place was packed with families. Unfortunately, none of my interior photos showed anything worthwhile so here’s the exterior including a great sculpture of a rotating globe that appears to float on a small fountain.

I then decided to take a drive along Monument Avenue to see how it had changed since the city decided to remove all the confederate statues in 2020. They have removed every part of the statues including the plinths and, in some cases, other structures so it was not worth stopping for photos but you can compare this road video with the one linked to in my blog post of 2018. The only remaining monument recognizes Richmond born Arthur Ashe.

I then headed to my hotel where I had significant technical issues which lead to the delay in making this post.