Thursday, June 25, 2026
We hit the road today for a trip to Virginia. The main focus was visiting our niece Kelly Martin. She spent a summer with us when she was a teenager, and now her oldest daughter is a teenager. So we decided it was time for Aunt Cheryl Obrien and Uncle Kevin to do some quality spoiling of her three kids. We drove for this trip, but broke it up into two stages by spending the night in a hotel outside of Pittsburgh. So this was an uneventful day, but a pleasant enough drive. There was an Outback restaurant literally next door that offered 10% off to hotel guests, so we ate there, and then early to bed for an early start tomorrow.
Friday, June 26, 2026
We were up at 5am to get an early start. We had arranged to met Cheryl’s cousin Cindy, her husband Rocky, their daughter Lindsay, and Lindsay’s kids for lunch in Virginia. We thought the early start would make it easy, but an accident brought travel to a stop for about an hour and made us late. But we still did meet them and hade a very nice lunch and got to catch up on everyone’s lives. Lindsay had just defended her dissertation for a PhD in Education, so she is now Doctor Lindsay, so we offered congratulations. After lunch we picked up groceries for the week, then headed to the resort in Williamsburg, Virginia. By the time we arrived it was about 7:30, so we unpacked, made a quick dinner, and then to bed.
Saturday, June 27, 2026
Our first full day in Virginia, and we had breakfast before heading to Kelly and Kenny’s place. We were showed around the property, then we elected to take Kelly and the kids to ropes course called Go Ape, located in the Williamsburg area. Cheryl and I planned to stay on the ground, but Kelly was hoping she could talk Gunnar into going around with her. But in the end he was having none of it, so they both got off. But Rylee and Tinsley completed the course, with the zip line exit from each of the three rounds. Each round got a little higher in the trees, so by the end the girls were really up there!
It was really hot in Virginia this week, but being in the trees was a little cooler. Then we all went back to the resort to use the swimming pool. Gunnar really liked that and loved jumping from the pool deck into the pool. And with that our day wrapped up.
Sunday, June 28, 2026
This was a day off for me as everyone was going horseback riding. I had a back injury from that in 1980, and have stayed off horses ever since. Gunnar decided to pass this one up as well, from the report I got. But the others had a great time. On the way back Cheryl found herself taking a ferry. We were in the Chesapeake Bay area of Virginia, so each trip we made involved bridges and/or tunnels to go across the water.
Monday, June 29, 2026
With all of the heat we decided that a visit to the water park would be in order. And it was also near to Williamsburg, so very convenient. Gunnar mostly hung out in the pool by the entrance to the lazy river, but the girls were more adventurous and managed to get Cheryl and I to go on a couple of the big rides along with them. One was sitting in an inflated boat that went through a pipe that corkscrewed until we were discharged at the bottom, and the other was a giant slide where you started at about 150 feet in the air and raced to the bottom. We also did a few turns around the lazy river, and I got sunburn on the top of my head. I need to bring a cheap hat next time I do this.
Then we met up with Chase, the kids Dad, who treated us to dinner at a Mexican restaurant before we all went back to our residences.
Tuesday, June 30, 2026
Kelly had to work today so Cheryl and I were on our own for the day. So it was time to go to Colonial Williamsburg, which is why we were staying in Williamsburg in the first place. Before coming here I had entertained the thought of taking the girls there, but that would have been a very bad idea. Fortunately no one brought up that idea. Colonial Williamsburg is a pretty big deal for anyone interested in history, which we are. It is a recreation to some degree of how this town looked during the colonial period, with restored buildings and people dressed in colonial clothing to re-enact people who might have lived there. It is a big place, and we only saw part of it. The extreme heat continued, and after about 3 hours we agreed we had enough and went back to the resort and back to the air conditioning.
Wednesday, July 1, 2026
Kelly was off again so we had another day together with her and the kids. We started with a visit to the navy base where we drove around and looked at the ships there while Kelly gave us information about navy life. Then we visited Kenny where he was working repairing and maintaining aircraft. Following this visit we went to Virginia Beach, grabbed some lunch, and then went on a Dolphin Cruise. They pretty much guaranteed we would see dolphins, and in fact we did. They did not really do anything amazing, but it was nicely cool on the water, and it is always cool to see dolphins. The kids loved it when we were coming back to dock and hit rough water, because every time the bow smacked down on the water they would get sprayed.
Thursday, July 2, 2026
This was our last full day in Virginia, and again Kelly had to work. So Cheryl and I went to Richmond for a visit to the Immersive Monet Experience. This is a traveling exhibition that runs in a variety of locations, and is focused on the paintings of Claude Monet. They recreate a couple of the rooms from Giverny, and even have a small wooden bridge like the famous one on his water lily pond. Then there is a multimedia display of his paintings with video being projected on to the walls, and chairs where you could sit and just let it run while you watched.. And at the end, there was VR exhibition where you would put on a helmet and be in the action as some of his scenes were recreated. We were there for about 2 hours, and it was definitely worth the trip to Richmond.
Then we returned, and went to Chase’s house where the kids were staying. We all went out to dinner at the local Golden Corral, and when Kelly got off work she met us back at Chase’s. But finally it was time to go, as we needed to start back tomorrow.
Friday, July 3, 2026
We checked out of the resort around 9am. It was very nice place to stay, and we would stay there again for any future trips. We drove back to the Hampton Inn in Monroeville, and this trip was uneventful. This time we went for dinner to a Chinese Buffet, which I found rather unmemorable.
Saturday, July 4, 2026
We got a good start and were off on the last leg of our trip. What slowed us down a bit was that we ran into many sections of road work that required us to slow down. But we still made good time and got back home around 1:30pm. But we found we had no power. A major storm the previous night had brought down tree branches that broke power lines all over Southeastern Michigan. So we had an unpleasant night. No air conditioning, so we had to open the windows and hope for a breeze, but this meant that the local juvenile deliquents detonating explosives were even louder. We finally got our power back Sunday evening around 7:30pm, and spent Monday morning throwing out everything that was in our refrigerator and freezer.
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