East Coast Tour Day 7

The boys were up and ready to go even though it was an early start.  We drove for about 45 minutes and hopped on a trolley for a tour of historic Fredericksburg, VA.  We were shown where George Washington and his family lived when he was 6. Saw numerous homes and buildings of historic significance primarily because of their age, some having been built in the 1720’s.  This was more than a civil war history tour.  Fredericksburg is rich in pre-Revolutionary War history.  Fredericksburg is antique shop heaven and offers a variety of antiquities to choose from.  The boys were able to explore the shops for about 45 minutes in between lunch, battlefield tours and learning about Apothecary.  The Battle of Fredericksburg involved more soldiers than any battle in the Civil War.  There are 18,000 soldiers buried in the National Cemetery there, most with no name.  From a Union perspective this battle was a disaster.  We took a walking tour of the Sunken Road which meandered along a path behind a rock wall the Confederate soldiers laid behind as the Union soldiers tried numerous times, unsuccessfully, to take the high ground.  This was a living history experience that may take the boys awhile to absorb but one they will probably ever forget.  We learned about medical history through the Apothecary presentation where the boys had numerous questions about leaches, how water was filtered through soap stone to produce purity and other methods of healing and treatments.  They were asked the difference between leaches found in a lake and those used in Apothecary.  The answer was the Apothecary leaches are trained.  We left historic Fredericksburg and checked into the hotel with an hour to spare before busing off to the performance at Fredericksburg United Methodist Church.  They rehearsed and were served a Mexican dinner.  The performance in front of about 180 people live and many more through streaming video was great.  We mingled afterward over cookies, water and punch before heading back to the hotel for sleep.  It’s off to Washington DC in the morning where the boys will most certainly rock the nation’s capital.