Doug's 2016 Bike Blog: October 15

After packing up and leaving this morning I rode just over 3 miles to the Historic Jamestown Visitor Center. As I got there 5 buses pulled up from Bailey Travel which I recognized from York, PA. I went over and spoke with one of the bus drivers and, sure enough, they brought a bunch of Dallastown middle school kids down to Williamsburg and Jamestown for the day. They must have started out pretty early to get here at opening time of 9am.

The Visitors Center is quite large and you could probably spend a good part of a day looking at all the exhibits.

There is a recreation of an Indian village.

And a replica of the original 3 ships that brought colonists over from England in 1607.

The smallest of the 3 ships is only 61 feet in length. Hard to imagine sailing across the Atlantic ocean in any of these boats. The conditions were atrocious.

There is also a replica of Jamestown Fort with period actors to tell you about life back then.

Of course I had to stop by the surgeons hut and talk with him about the instrumentation used in those times. Very interesting. Apparently they drank some kind of opioid mixture before having a procedure. Still must have been pretty nasty!

From there is was on to the Jamestown Scotland ferry across the James River. While boarding I met husband and wife cyclers, Tom and Sue, who are also traveling the Atlantic Coast Route to Florida. Sue explained they are celebrating their Transamerica bicycle trip of 40 years ago!! Very impressive.

The ferry put us ashore at 11:30am and still another 50 miles to ride so I had to step on the pedals a little bit (that means going from 10mph to 13mph!!). After a few small hills the roads were mostly flat.