Todd's parents are visiting us for a few days. We went to the Edgar Allan Poe museum in Richmond today--an appropriate Halloween activity, I think.
The museum is set in and around the oldest house in Richmond, a tiny stone house built in the mid-1700s. There's an old courtyard behind, and several more old brick buildings that you walk through to see the Poe displays.
The weather was perfect for gloomy photos--muggy and rainy.
There's a bust of Poe tucked back inside this arched structure, very atmospheric.
Here's me with the brooding genius lurking behind me. I forgot to take the earbuds out of my ears--we each got a little mp3 player with the audio tour to listen to as we walked around.
The courtyard was really beautiful, even in the rain.
We learned a lot about Poe...I certainly had no idea he had grown up in Richmond. The museum has lots of artifacts from the era he lived in.
After grabbing a quick lunch, we went down to the river district and took a boat ride on the old canal that's been preserved downtown.
Turtles hanging out.
The view looks bleak, but the history was fascinating. This canal runs right through the heart of Richmond--it's been here since the earliest days of the city. The warehouses behind the railroad tracks are replacements for all the warehouses that burned down when Richmond was evacuated by the Confederate army at the very end of the Civil War.
Our boat pilot/tour guide, who was excellent, mentioned that this view (below) sums up the history of transportation in America: the canal at the bottom, the railroad tracks going over top of that (on the right), and the freeway bridges running over top of it all. I guess if there's been a visible plane in the sky above, we'd really have seen it all!
We had a fun day. Came home and got ready for the trick-or-treaters. I ran out of candy for the first time ever!
