A Little History and Peach Picking Fun

One of the great things about both my husband and me being teachers is having the ability to take fun road trips during the summer. Today we decided to visit Montpelier in Orange, VA, which was the home of James Madison. Being a history teacher, my husband loves to visit historical sites. We have found that they can be fun, educational family activities. This trip was no different.

The tour began with a short movie about James Madison. I will admit that this was not my favorite part of the tour, but it was informative and my girls managed to sit still the entire time!

After the film, our tour guide began to take us around the grounds of Montpelier. (We went on the family-friendly tour, which was well worth it because it kept my girls interested because much of the tour was geared towards kids.)

It is a gorgeous house! (There is no photography allowed inside the house, so I do not have any pictures to share.) They are doing a lot of archaeological digging around the property to learn more about the Madison family. My girls enjoyed watching them dig for artifacts, and they got to go into the Archaeology Lab and look at samples up close. We all found it to be very interesting!

We pretty much had the freedom to go where we wanted to on the grounds. We talked to one of the archaeologists working and she told us the tree pictured below is a "witness tree" that had been on the property since the time James Madison lived there. My girls found this fact to be really cool!

After we left Montpelier, we decided to go peach picking at Carter Mountain Orchard in Charlottesville, VA. (It was about a 40 minute drive.) We have been peach and apple picking at this particular orchard before. It is one of our favorites! You have the option to pick your own peaches or buy some already picked, but we always walk to the orchard and pick our own. The girls love it!

After we picked peaches, we sat on the back deck area of the orchard and ate peach cider donuts. They are AMAZING!!! The view is also incredible, but the donuts are what make the trip so worth it!

We had such a great day! It is nice to stop our crazy, scheduled life for a day and just have fun!

-Trina

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