20th Wedding Anniversary

August was a busy month.  Other than the Good Wife's family reunion, there was also the earthquake and the start of school.  But the big event was the Good Wife and my 20th wedding anniversary.  20 years!  That seems like such a long time ago.  It was three kids ago, two dogs ago, three houses ago, two states ago and about seven cars ago.

A little while before our anniversary, the Good Wife got one of those timeshare calls asking us to come and visit a resort in Williamsburg.  For our time, we would get two nights and three days in Williamsburg.  Why not?  It would only take 90 minutes of our time.

The weekend came and off we went, along with the three boys.  They joined us for the first night there since it was a Thursday night.  Friday morning, some friends met us part way and took them until Saturday evening.  The Good Wife and I were celebrating.  Now what?

You never know what you will see in when you get into a tourist infested area.

On the recommendation of a co-worker, we went to find Edward's Virginia Ham Shoppe.  We happened to come across one in Williamsburg and got a sandwich from their deli.  It was excellent.  They were friendly and kept offering us samples.  We could have stayed there and had a full meal.

But apparently that wasn't the original store.  We were on a quest.  The original Virginia Ham Shoppe was across the James River.  And the best way to get across the river is by the Jamestown-Scotland Ferry.

Although it looks foggy, it was smoke from the Great Dismal Swamp fire.  It was a nice ride across the river.  Something different.  Once on the other side, it was a few miles down the road and there was the original Ham Shoppe.

Surprisingly it was smaller than the other shop in Williamsburg.  We had such a good sandwich the day before, we decided to get another one for later.  We asked for the same sandwich we had at the first shop, and they wouldn't give it to us!  We wanted the pretzel bread but didn't want a hot sandwich.  They refused to make it for us.  They said they only make the pretzel bread in a hot sandwich.  We told them we had just had a cold sandwich with the pretzel bread the day before at the shop in Williamsburg, but they still refused.  I don't understand how stores can stay in business being that rude.  We selected a different bread, got our sandwich and headed back to the ferry.

Before getting back on the ferry, we stopped at a dollar store for some oyster crackers.  We wanted to feed the seagulls that followed the ferry.

They were everywhere.  And most of them were very talented and would catch them up in the air.  Several families came back to watch and we shared our crackers with the kids.  Everyone had fun.

Then it was time to go to our timeshare meeting.  We had no interest at any point, and were only fulfilling our obligation.  Three hours later, it was finally over.  Yes you read that right, three hours!  The only good thing was that our salesman took us on a drive through Williamsburg to show us the sights and told us a lot of the history of the area.  That was worth it, but that is about it.

We drove the entire Colonial National Historic Parkway.  It is a nice road through the woods between Jamestown, through Williamsburg and on to Yorktown.

We got to see the Yorktown Victory Monument and walk along the beach and have some ice cream.

Too soon it was time to head home.  We had fun, even though our "free" hotel was horrible  I don't even want to mention the name.  We had originally planned to go to Las Vegas and get our wedding vows renewed by Elvis.  We did that for our 10th anniversary and wanted to do it again, but that was when we were still living in Phoenix and much closer to Las Vegas.

I rented a tux, the Good Wife slipped back into her original wedding dress, and Elvis presided.  It was just the two of us and Elvis.  We had a lot of fun.  Who knows, maybe for our 30th!  I'm sure Elvis will still be alive and kicking in Las Vegas.