June 9, Monday – To Virginia

I bid farewell to Bodie Island in the Outer Banks and drove through the wildfire smoke to clean air up north to Chesapeake Bay country. I then navigated around the early morning rush hour of Chesapeake and Norfolk skirting the cities to the west and headed up the west bank of the James River with my eye on dropping anchor at a place called Chippokes Plantation, as in State Park. What a find. These kinds of discoveries just blow my mind. No research; no planning. Just pick a place on the map and go.
The actual plantation is one of the oldest continuously farmed land in America. Clearing of the land started just decades after the settling of Jamestown in 1607 and now the 1,400 acre plantation has 20 historically important structures including slave quarters and two plantation houses.
After setting up camp, I explored late in the afternoon. The main mansion was locked when I tried the door but a small sign said it was open for another 30 minutes. As I walked away the door unlocked and a woman said to come in. What ensued was an amazing personal tour of the mansion and its history by a person who was attached heretically to the plantation. The plantation, which was named after the chief of the local tribe in the 1600’s, has seen only a handful of owners in its 400 year history. In 1967 the Stewarts donated it to the Virginia State Parks Systems with strict terms. It named the crops that had to be grown on the plantation and what families associated with the plantation needed to work there. As I listened to her talk my eyes went on a feasting journey. It was as if the family up and left in a moment’s notice in the early part of the last century. The woman spoke of finding boxes stacked in the hallways when they first looked inside the mansion. They found living history inside those boxes; pitures, documents, books; kitchen and dinning room wares. She said they found 80 oriental rugs of which 60 of them where on the floors. Furniture, oh, the furniture. The Stewarts were close friends of the Rockefellers, who would bring gifts of bedspreads and furniture.
She spoke of ghosts that she had seen and of a cannon ball that she found in the woods last fall. Of being involved in the living history/antique farming equipment gathering the day before and how she showed people and nieces of the old owners how to do hearth cook. What an absolute treasure this woman was and there I stood transfixed listening to her. My head was swimming as she unlocked the door and let me out..