A Museum Plus Six

I slept late this morning after being up til 2:30 working on the blog last night, but I was up, showered and we were out the door about eleven to visit the Casemate Museum that is located here on Fort Monroe.  I immediately started taking pictures of the housing close to the RV park when we noticed a ship in the Bay.

DeWayne pulled over so that I could get a closer look at this huge vessel going by

Once again, the haze makes it hard to take very good pictures.  This is from the beach that is close to the RV park.  So we got back in the truck and travelled on around the bend to a Engineer wharf that we could walk out on.

And we arrived just as that huge ship was passing by.

Out on the wharf, there were fishermen manning their poles or cleaning their fish.


As that ship just passed on by


Looking back toward the fort from the wharf, I got a picture of the light house.
buildings across the street from the wharf
 

I believe the building above is an historic hotel.

We went on our way to search out the museum and I had to take pictures of the officer’s housing along the way. 




These homes have been here for a very long time and are still timeless and beautiful.

Here is a model of the original fort that is still here today.

You’ll notice there is a “mote” completely surrounding the fort.  This is what it looks like from the outside:


And to get to the inside of the fort, we had to pass over this bridge:

Notice the tunnel on the left end of the bridge?  It was barely wide enough for our truck to fit through, but we made it to the other side and found ourselves inside the old fort.  We wound our way around til we found the museum

And directly in front of where we parked the truck was this sign

We were parked in front of Robert E. Lee’s home while he was stationed at Fort Monroe. 

Here is the actual house:

Beautiful, isn’t it?  I could live there.  After ooo-ing and ahhh-ing over that, we walked to the entrance of the museum and found this old cistern:

And the info about that

More pictures outside the entrance to the museum:

Beautiful, isn’t it?  Here is DeWayne going into the entrance to the museum:

It was HOT and HUMID today, so it was great to walk into a nice air conditioned place. 

First of all, if you’re wondering what a “casemate” is, here is the explanation;

The museum consists of one casemate after another, connected by low archways.  I had DeWayne stand up just in front of one of them to give you an idea low they are:

Apparently way back when, the average height of the soldiers was 5’8”, so the arches were sufficient. 

Without going into a history lesson, I’ll just share some of what we saw:








That’s Edgar Allen Poe who was stationed at Ft. Monroe at one time.



Then we were at the end and I took this just outside the exit


Now, wasn’t that a nifty tour?  I thought so.

So that was the museum.  We had made plans to meet our blog friend Susan for dinner, so we came back to the RV for the afternoon and didn’t venture out if we didn’t have to, due to the heat and humidity today.  This evening we travelled to Phoebus, which is a small town just outside the fort to meet with Susan, then the three of us made our way to Outback for a great dinner. 

Here we are, enjoying our appetizers and drinks.  For our fellow “streamers”, here’s your opportunity to see “Six”, “Pup” and “Ice” all together for the first time. 

We already knew that Susan (Six) was a great person and one of our absolute favorites from our former blog site.  And she certainly didn’t disappoint.  She's as genuine in person as we expected.  We had a wonderful time visiting with our old, but never met before, friend.  Thank you Susan for meeting with us.  You’re a gem and we enjoyed you so much.  I hope we will cross paths again soon.

So that has been our day.  My eyelids are drooping heavily, but I wanted to get this blog post ready to go and out of the way while it was all fresh on my mind.  We leave tomorrow heading for Roanoke, Virginia where we will be staying in “camp walmart” for the night, then on to Bluff City, Tennessee for the next night in another RV park. 

Our travel schedule will put us home on the 30th for the reunion. 

Fort Monroe is a beautiful place and once again, I hate to leave, but am anxious to see what’s around the next corner.  That’s all for now, so tune in tomorrow for more of “The Breeze”.  Until then…..HAPPY TRAILS!