A Day With Mr. Madison

Montpelier is the home of our fourth president: James Madison. Where we live in Greene County we’re about equidistant from Madison’s home in Orange County and Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello and James Monroe’s Ash Lawn-Highland in Albemarle County. It’s like living between the presidents and I find that we’re very lucky to live so close to the historical figures that helped create the America we live in today (whether they would agree with everything or not).

The Boy and The Girl are on Spring Break from school so I took this week off work and invited my mother up from Florida to spend the week. According to the divorce agreement I am entitled to up to 14 days a year for vacation with the children. This is hard on them, though. Summer is really hard…they’re being shuffled from one event to another and I feel for them. They hardly have any downtime at all. So I thought I’d take spring break week as one of my weeks.

This week we’ve hit Massanutten Waterpark, shopped for new spring clothes, spent the night with friends, cooked out s’mores and went to Montpelier for the day. Here are some photos of our trip there.

Montpelier reconstructed to the time of James Madison's retirement.

You can see the Blue Ridge Mountains in the distance but just barely.

This is called Mr. Madison's Temple.

Cute little water tower in the woods near Montpelier.

This is in the Dupont's formal garden at Montpelier. I just thought it had the most perfect shape.

A view through the center of the formal gardens.

I thought this lion statue looked a little sad and had an identical face that my golden retriever makes sometimes.