Never a dull moment!

We have been in Virginia for 2 months now and we have put our time to good use seeing many of the local sights and immersing ourselves in the diverse history of the area. We have traveled a large span of time from the 1600s and pre-revolutionary era to the 1800s and Civil war era. I have learned so much and we have only skimmed the top of what all there is to see and do here! I have no idea how anybody could possibly ever be bored here, I feel as though we could travel every weekend and still miss things.
This weekend we visited Fort Monroe.

Fort Monroe is an Army installation in the Hampton Roads area. It served a vital role in protecting the eastern shoreline of Virginia and preventing any ships from entering the James River from the Atlantic. Fort Monroe is the only active Army post that is truly a Fort and is surrounded completely by a moat. In the picture above you can see the Chesapeake Bay at the top of the photo, the Atlantic Ocean spans out from the right side of the photo and the James River is the bottom and left side of the picture. You can see the star shaped, six-sided moat inthe center of the peninsula. Here is a better picture of how Ft. Monroe is set-up.











In order to enter inside the moat you had to drive through one these tiny bridge tunnels.

It was seriously a tight squeeze and I wasn't sure if we could fit Andrew's truck through it or not. Once you cross through that bridge and over the moat, it is like you traveled back in time and are living in the 1800s again. There are actual houses, churches and offices inside of the fort. How cool would it be to say that you live inside of an actual fort??? Once inside we visited a casemate museum, which is essentially a wall of the fort that is set-up with canons and other defenses. The museum was really neat and across the street from the museum the house where Gen. Lee's (then Lt. Lee) first child was born.



This is a picture outside of the casemate museum and moat. Inside of this casemate you would find a canon and other defenses at each one of those windows directed toward the Atlantic Ocean.

I am generally underwhelmed by military engineering, but even I will admit that this is ingenious and I was thoroughly impressed!

Outside of the moat and fort, was typical military installation stuff: PX, commissary, hotel, office buildings, military housing.






The Garrison Commander's house.

Lt. Gen. Dempsey, he is in charge of TraDoc.













This is the Historic Chamberlin hotel that is on Ft. Monroe. You definitely won't find anything this nice on Ft. Hood!!!


If you are are ever on the east coast near Ft. Monroe, it is most definitely worthy of a visit: fun, historic and scenic!