Historical Fredericksburg, VA

After a late Saturday evening flight from SLC, we arrived in Richmond, Virgina, Sunday, October 4th to begin our adventures in beautiful Virginia. We picked up our rental car, had a little breakfast and then drove to Fredericksburg, - about 50 miles north of Richmond. It was a beautiful drive with trees alongside both lanes of the interstate. It took awhile for us to realize that we were not going to see much scenery, except for trees, while we were driving on the interstates, so whenever possible we drove the more scenic byways.
Virginia is beautiful state with lots of rolling hills, lakes, beautiful trees, and only small areas of cleared ground. Unlike in the West, where we are planting trees to beautify our cities and yards, they are clearing trees so their homes or businesses can be seen.
We arrived in Fredericksburg by early afternoon and after getting settled in our hotel, we drove a few miles into Historical Downtown Fredericksburg.


All the buildings were so charming. Red brick houses with several chimneys, black shutters and white porches seemed to be the typical structure of the day. So pretty . . . I just loved the architecture.
We spend several hours just wandering around this pretty historical district. The cute shops painted in every color were all along tree lined streets. Many of the storefronts had colorful awnings and pretty little signs hanging above the doors . . . now that's my idea of what a little downtown area ought to look like!

The shops were all decorated for fall . . . and in front of one of the shops a fellow sat strumming his guitar. It made for a very pleasant atmosphere. We bought some popcorn from a street vendor and enjoyed our late afternoon stroll along the streets.

Huge churches were on just about every corner. This church steeple towered above the downtown area and even though it was an exception to the traditional red brick buildings, it was beautiful.

It was interesting to step into the cemetery, always located next to a church, and read the names and dates on the headstones. Some of the headstones were so worn it was difficult to read the dates, but you could still make out many of the dates from the mid and late 1700's.

And here's another church with it's tall steeple. It was amazing to us how many antique shops, churches and attorney offices we saw as we walked along the city streets. I guess there's never a shortage of attorneys in any city, but this area seemed to have more than it's share. The antique shops were full of interesting and beautiful collectibles. And on a corner in front of a store was a large stone where slaves were brought to be sold to the highest bidder. It was hard to believe we were standing right where such sad events had taken place, where families were split apart, never to see each other again. That's such a sad chapter in the history of this part of the country. Seeing all these historic buildings was like stepping back in history several hundred years. We thought all of this was so interesting and to think this was just the first day of our week long adventures in Virginia. What a way to start the week! We were looking forward to seeing lots of great things and having a wonderful time together.