Day 1 - Bull Run to Roanoke

   We got an early start and headed over to Manassass. We started on the main visitors center and they had baseball style cards for the girls and maps to show us around. We went into the museum area and watched an interactive map of the first battle. Ari loves those maps and asks a lot of questions. After the map presentation was done we made our way over to the gift shop. The girls got hand fans (fancy ones) and small flags. The fans were show in images of the civilians who were watching the first Bull Run from a distance, expecting the war to end that day. They left mostly in shock.

   We wandered the area around the visitors center and looked the the statues and house that was there. We drove around to a few different areas and took a few walks. The first time we went walking was through a nice looking field. We saw plenty of flowers and butterflies along the way and there was even a turtle on our path near the end.

   The next walk we took was around the Stone Bridge path. It was supposed to be around a mile walk, but the path wasn't well marked and split quite a bit. We ended up adding about 10 minutes to our trip overall, but we saw the whole path. Another visitor to the part gave us a bottle of water. He said he hikes around these parks quite a bit and told us to keep a lookout for deer ahead, which we did see. The girls did great on the hike.

   We made our way over to the Stone House, which the girls loved as well. Ari is always full of questions at places like this and it was no different here. She just loved visiting any kind of historical places. Lily loves seeing everything around these places. She loved the drives around the fields and forests. She also loves the hikes.

   We went through the rest of the stops along the map, including the Unfinished Railroad and the Methodist Church. We finished up at the smaller of the visitor centers which has the interactive map for the second battle. We let the girls watch that and made our way back to the car and headed off to Roanoke.

   We ate at a restaurant called the Pink Cadillac near Natural Bridge, VA. It was a great little diner with good food and good prices. I had a Country Fried Steak which was wonderful. Not much happened after that. The hotel was ok, but had no pool and we were all tired from all the walking.

Bull Run Pictures