Mount Vernon

Since I was staying in Alexandria VA for the Ricky Martin concert, I decided to spend the morning at Mount Vernon.  I hadn’t been there since fifth grade.  I didn’t remember it at all.

I didn’t know that I was there on the day of a reenactment.  The security guard asked me who I was rooting for.  I said, “For what?”  He told me that it was Revolutionary War weekend.  I would have thought every day at George Washington’s house was Revolutionary War weekend but what do I know.

There were camps of Yankees and Redcoats. I’m not too sure about the Yankees. They can’t march at all. I think they are going to lose. They also had some cavalry there. They kept crashing into each other when practicing their battle. (They were also riding breeds that didn’t exist during the Revolution but only horse geeks like me would be bothered by that.)

In the 1750s George Washington marched to the French forts out on the wild frontier to tell them to leave. They didn’t. This led to the French and Indian War. My house was on the route. (Well, not at the time.  My house came later.) When I was young, it was a thing for Boy Scout troops to march the route that George Washington took past our house. This freaked little me out. I had nightmares for years about George Washington bringing a war to my house. I had hiding plans worked out and everything. Now here I was with a bunch of soldiers at his house. Serves him right. See how he likes it.  

It was raining a lot so the battles got cancelled. The redcoats were sleeping in the museum. I did hear someone say over the loudspeaker that “horses still work in the rain” so they would have the cavalry demo. I don’t think anyone asked the horses about that.

Having a lot of people wandering about in costume leads to things like this.

There were blacksmiths.

And this dude carrying either a horse tail or a human head.

I loved this Cedar of Lebanon.

They did a good job discussing the role of slavery at Mount Vernon. This the is slave burial grounds.

There was a lot of information about slavery in the museum too.

I came across a redcoat looking at a replica of George Washington’s casket. 

The thing I was most impressed by was this.

This is the manure pit. If you haven’t had close contact with manure pits in your life, you may not appreciate how fancy this is. It had a cobblestone floor. I’m easily impressed.