Harborfest and Hikey-Hikeys

*** Note: Sorry guys! I tried to post this from DC, but the internet was too spotty. Better late than never, right? ***

On the 7th of June, the Honor Guard and I headed down to Norfolk for Harborfest/Sail Virginia (an annual tall ships festival) for a few days. This year’s Harborfest featured over thirty ships, more than in years past, with the Godspeed as the ship that led in the others in the Parade of Sail on that Friday morning.

However, we arrived the night before after being onsite at Jamestown in the morning to settle into our hotel and seek out some yummies. After very little debate, we decided on a delicious-sounding German restaurant called “The German Pantry.” We thought it was in walking distance (which it was, just through some slightly dubious areas of Norfolk), and we began the hot trek down the side of the road with thoughts of shnitzel waiting for us at the end. The German Pantry was located in a small strip mall and was decorated in all sorts of German travel posters, beersteins, German imports, etc. with the table for the locals clearly labeled in the center of the restaurant (just like in the great beer halls of Germany!). We all had a fantastic (& cheap!) German beer with our Jaegershnitzel and spatzel. Mmmmmm… We definitely needed the walk home after eating tons of tasty food, and had no sooner started the hike home before discussing how and when we would return. (photos: Too few hands and too much to carry! Jack with our free welcome cookies, free apple, and his shoes upon check-in; Kai, Mike, and Jack in front of the German Pantry; Mike and I showing our German spirit (Bavarian pretzel and all!); and mmmm... shnitzel...)




The next morning was the parade of sail, which was a bit delayed arriving in port. We did get to see some of the really neat tall ships come in from around the world (including countries like India, Uruguay, Brazil, Germany, England, and the Netherlands) and even had the ridiculously cute engagement of one of our crew members to a former employee via signal flags. Over the next few days at the festival, we did informal tours of the ship, schmoozed around the “historical” tavern and “historic area” of the festival, and sang a lot of sea shanties while braving a couple of days of intense heat and humidity. In between working and interpreting, we had some time to wander around and actually visit the ships and enjoy the festival. On Saturday night Jamestown friends joined us for the big fireworks display and roving fun around the festival. Sunday night was a big reception for the ships’ crews with Monday being the day to finally get home after a final, mellow day. After a day off, we were back on the road on Wednesday to Portsmouth (the town just across the Elizabeth River from Norfolk) for a day-long festival, much more low key than Harborfest. (photos: Jacks in Space; me with the giant sparkling pirate; Godspeed coming in with the Parade of Sail; the Uruguayan and Brazilian ships; and yeah, I wouldn't pick them up either.)





(photos: the German sailors furling at the top of their main mast; a view of the "historic" area where we were stationed when not on the Godspeed, with the German ship in the background; fireworks from the Godspeed; the USS Wisconsin; and the ship parade with the crew of the Picton Castle tying flags to their deck brooms.)





(photos: Yup, that's my boss after a hard day's work...; me and my partner in crime for the evening; Mike, Jack, and Todd; German sailor guy, Martin (one of our ship crew that's also Polish), and Jack; and me on the Brazilian ship.)





I then had a day back in Williamsburg/Jamestown before heading out with friends to go camping. We left Friday night to drive to Harrisonburg to the house of one of the camping brigade members as a jumping-off point for the hiking extravaganza beginning on Saturday. However, after an evening of cards and organ playing (the latter was all Jeff), we discovered a jousting tournament and renaissance “fayre” at a nearby park. The “fayre” was about five booths of vendors with the jousting happening quite separately. The jousters themselves weren’t in costume, but rather were your average Appalachian farmers on horseback riding full tilt at rings as small as lifesavers, trying to spear them on their lances. Best $1.50 I’ve spent in a while. (photos: Some of the games from the Fayre, including the Sheep Toss; yup, that's the entire "fayre"; jousting announcers with the sheilds of all the different jousting clubs; one of the jousters trying to catch the ring on his lance; and I can't even explain how this one works...)





After jousting, we had to get a move on to actually get to camping. We loaded our cars and headed to try to find a campsite near the hike we had planned to do. After nearly two hours of searching and a round of frozen custards, we decided to camp someplace entirely different – Shenandoah National Park. We got in around dusk, found one of the few remaining campsites, and set up camp. Little did we know when we chose our site that we would be between a group of singing student hippies and a large party of Mexicans rocking quite a bit of tejano music and Mexican techno til the wee hours. Sunday hiking we did a big hike up Rocky Mount (9+ miles down, up down, and up a mountain with a bit of dehydration for all of us at the end) and Monday morning we hiked Old Rag (7+ miles up and down a mountain over massive rock scrambles, including a close encounter with a black bear). It’d been a while since I’d been on a hike, which I had missed quite a lot. After finishing our hike on Monday, we returned to Williamsburg via my first Chik-Fil-A (pronounced “chick fillet” – delicious!) in Charlottesville.(photos: Heading up Skyline Drive to the Rocky Mount trailhead; Jeff looking really hard for those fossilized wormholes we read about; Jeff also really liked the supposedly rare lichen; me (at least my feet) at the top of Rocky Mount; and the view into the Shenandoah Valley from Rocky Mount.)





(photos: The first woodsy part of the Old Rag trail; rock scrambles! We had to follow the blue arrows down, through, up, and around lots of huge boulders; view from the top of Old Rag up the Shenandoah; view east with those rocky parts being the scrambles we'd just finished; and another huge boulder with the supposedly rare lichen.)





After camping, there was definite need for recouperation time, since I spent the next day at work at Jamestown hobbling around for the morning like an old decrepit woman after scrambling all over house-sized boulders the day before. My time in Williamsburg would only last a week before I was back on the road to Washington, DC for the Smithsonian Folklife Festival.