Spring 2022-On the Road Again!: Day 5-Richmond

Woke up to another another cold morning, 32°, in Pocahontas State Park...but it's sunny and temps in the 60°s were predicted. The chilly temps kept us in the van while we ate our OJ, cereal, and coffee and by 9 AM we were on our way to Richmond, just 21 miles to the north of our campground.

After stopping at a local French bakery to pick up some delicious pastries, (sorry forgot the photos, we stopped at the American Civil War Museum whose mission is to offer multiple perspectives: Union, Confederate, enslaved, and free African Americans. It was truly fascinating, enlightening, thought provoking, and a must see for all Americans.

The museum is located on the grounds of the Tredegar Iron Works which produced most of the cannons and cannon balls for the Confederacy. It is adjacent to the Richmond Civil War battleground.

In addition to being the capitol of the Confederacy, Richmond is still today a major railroad hub for the South, so long freight trains continually passed by as we toured the grounds of the museum and adjacent battlefield.

Leaving the Tredegar area, we took a lunch break at a Greek restaurant called Stella's. It was rated as #3 out of 1087 restaurants in the Richmond area! This was our big meal of the day and it was worth every calorie. We started with a humus and eggplant spread for the home made pita bread, then we both had a lamb gyro...but this wasn't the lamb gyro that you had anywhere else. It was spectacular. Since it was a greek restaurant we couldn't leave without sampling Stella's baklava...it too was spectacular!

MELITZANOSALATA: SMASHED GRILLED EGGPLANT DIP, GARLIC, ONION, LEMON, EXTRA VIRGIN OLIVE OIL, GRILLED PITA

One of the leafy streets in Stella's neighbor

LAMB GYRO: OPEN FACED SANDWICH WITH SLICED LEG OF LAMB, TOMATO, ONION, TZATZIKI, GRILLED PITA

Leaving Stella's we then took a guided tour of the White House of the Confederacy, the home of Jefferson Davis. Our tour guide was very informative and the home, where President Davis lived with his wife and four children. was well restored to replicate how it looked while he lived there. Two days after Davis and family abandoned their home, President Lincoln visited the residence.

We then moved the clock further back in time and visited the Saint John's Episcopal Church where Patrick Henry delivered his famous "Give me liberty or give me death" speech. Henry made his plea to the second Virginia Revolutionary conference to join the New England States in forming a new nation. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were among the Virginians in the audience.

We ended our day in Richmond at the Chimborazo Hospital which was a complex of hospital tents created to attend the extraordinary numbers of casualties that the Confederacy was encountering during the war. The model of triage created by this hospital is still used by the US military.