Monticello

Yesterday we all took a trip to Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson. It was one of the most amazing places I've been. I wasn't expecting to feel that way but the whole time I was there I was filled with reverence for Jefferson and had goosebumps thinking that he had sat in this chair, walked down this trail, that kind of thing.

Nikki had some work to do, so she stayed down the hill and Georgie and I took the shuttle up the hill to the mansion. They have enough people coming that you have to actually get a tour time and be escorted by a docent. Probably a good idea because the house is filled with priceless relics. Also, it's 2o bucks a person, so just Georgie and I getting tickets made financial sense. Nikki hasn't quite discovered her love of Jefferson yet, so I don't think she felt like she missed out. I'll correct her error on a future trip. :)

I really admire Jefferson. When you walk in to the first room of his house, you already get a good sense of the breadth of his interests. There are all kinds of maps, animal horns, Indian artifacts, scientific instruments, and inventions. It looks crazy. It looks nothing like how you would imagine any other person of his status decorating their mansion.

Which brings me to a larger point about Monticello. As much as you can say this about a president's mansion on a 5000 acre plantation, it's kind of modest. The house at least is not very big. It seems mostly designed for Jefferson's various intellectual undertakings than to impress anyone. In fact the whole estate seems designed more for what it can do rather than how it will look.

After the main room, the tour continues through Martha Randolph's room, where she lived with her family and ran much of the household. Next is Jefferson's library. Again, this is another example of showiness losing out to utility. The library has little natural light and is kind of cramped and dungeonous. You get the sense that Jefferson wasn't looking to impress anyone with his collection, he just really needed to be able to look stuff up on demand.

The next room is Jefferson's office and bedroom. His desk was the first thing that stood out for me. It's a large table with a nice chair behind it, but then it has a long ottoman sort of thing that allowed him to put his legs out at 90 degrees. An nice way to sit and work I think. This room, more than any, was familiar to people because of the HBO series John Adams. The polygraph device he invented to write two copies of a letter at once is on the desk. The bust of John Adams is in the window. When the docent asked who died 3 hours after Jefferson on the same day, everyone in the room seemed to know it was Adams. This is a good thing, I think.

The next two rooms are the parlor and dining hall, respectively. It was in the dining hall that Georgie started really fussing and I had to ask to step out of the tour. So Georgie and I strolled around the grounds and she slowly fell asleep about the time we got to Jefferson's gravesite. We took a slow, leisurely walk through the woods on the path back to the visitor's center.

As we got back to the plaza, we started getting around a lot more people and I started worrying about her waking up. It's kind of funny the thoughts you have as a parent when you are trying to keep your kid asleep in public. You start cursing under your breath at people, thinking things like, "Why can't you move closer to each other and talk quieter?" and "What's wrong with these people, talking in public." But it was 90 degress and 90 percent humidity out and we had been walking outside for half an hour. I needed to get Georgie into some A/C.

It was with me catching myself being irrationally angry at talking passersby that I met the devil. By this time I had retrieved Nikki and we were trying to find some place quiet and cool to sit out the rest of Georgie's nap. We went down below the plaza to a conference office that looked quiet. As soon as we walked in, an old biddy at a desk screamed in our direction, "What can I help you with?"

I gestured to Nikki to go explain that we wanted to sit somewhere quiet and let Georgie keep sleeping. The lady said we could sit on some chairs across the room. We did so. I guess the lady took offense at our whispering, because the next thing she did was to scream in our direction, "I've raised a bunch of them, and if you start whispering around them, you won't get any peace."

Ironically, peace is exactly what we had until her devil banshee howl of unwanted advice. It woke Georgie right up and, probably in part due to the pissed off looks on both her parents' faces, made her start bawling.

I made right for the door, giving the devil woman a look that I hoped would feel like a punch in the face. Seemingly oblivious to what she had done, the asshole had the nerve to ask in a singsong voice, "How old is she?"

Nikki, exiting behind me, was so flustered that all she could yell back is, "Now she's crying!"

We all went outside while Nikki and I calmed down and Georgie woke up. The former half of that kind of a while. We got over it though and checked out the discovery center next door. Georgie had a good time in there playing with some building sets, touring a mock slave cabin (see pictures below), and interacting with a high-spirited 14-month old we met in there.

To get back to the hotel, we took the interstate all the way to the entrance to the Blue Ridge Parkway and came down the mountain to our hotel instead of going through the valley and up. It was a nice drive, sort of like Skyline Drive but wilder and less manicured or something. All and all, with one notable exception, it was a wonderful day and I'd really like to go back.
Here are some pictures:

Here's an idea of the view from the front side of the house.

You may have noticed a weather vane on top of the house in the first picture. That weather vane is connected to this compass on the porch, so you only have to peek outside to see which was the wind is blowing.

In a similar fashion, this clock is connected to a larger grandfather clock inside the house.

This is the back side of the house. Jefferson's office and bedroom are on the right side and the parlor is in the middle where the columns are.

Here's a row of buildings just below the main house that includes the kitchen and other food-related rooms.

One of them is the smoke house, which still smells like a barbeque pit. You can really picture the slaves preparing Virginia hams in here.

Part of Monticello's vegetable garden.

Ruins of a chimney at what was the joinery.

Jefferson had his vegetable garden built on terraced land with a retaining wall below. You can really see the view from here. This is on an opposite side of the house from the other view picture, so you can really see how Monticello is built on the top of a hill.

One of Jefferson's most famous inventions was the stretchy dinosaur, available for purchase in the gift shop.

Here's Georgie in the discovery center they have set up for the younger visitors. She is in a mock slave cabin, 'cooking' some vegetables. It was kind of weird to watch her 'play' slave.