
This is the same kind of yurts that are at First Landing State park for those tough campers who don’t need electricity or running water. At First Landing the yurts are more hidden by dune bushes so I never got a good shot of them.

This is a pretty wild field that you walk though to get on the trail. It was cloudy today but I bet this is beautiful in the fall with the sun on it.

This is a pretty spot but probably not practical to do a painting there because I’d have to move out of the way if anyone came down there with their boat.

There are these white bleached looking dead trees all along next to the water, part of the York River. They would be striking on a dark background but I couldn’t find a good place to sketch them.
Oysters in the mud, must have been low tide.

More oysters.

There’s an unpaved path on the other side of the fence. It looks like the paths circle the park which is a huge huge field with some rows of trees through the middle and a circular road. It doesn’t look like you can go into the center. I don’t know if they farm the fields or not. I thought one looked like a crop was mowed but I can’t tell what it was. The park was a farm before but it has a big history with the Native American tribes in the area.
Machicomoco is an Algonquin word meaning “special meeting place”. I don’t know how they pronounce it.

It’s at the “Interpretive Center” which has great views from up on a hill. The house is circa 1800 and it’s being restored.
They have tiles with little blurbs of historical info down a paved section close to the house. I didn’t read all of it but the first ones say that there was human habitation in the area 16,000 to 8,000 BCE. They found some scientific evidence of it. I need to go back and ask what was found because I didn’t go into the visitor center and on my way home I had some questions.
So, humans were there at the end of the last ice age even before the Chesapeake Bay was formed. One of the plaques said the bay was formed by ice melt runoff. Must have been something to witness the bay being formed. I wonder if that happened fast or slowly.

I saw some kind of bird I never saw before running on the ground in the field making a chattery whistle. I tried to find a picture of one but couldn’t. It was around the size of a crow but brown with darker stripes. Maybe a rail, I’m not sure, could be a grouse or something else.

It took an hour to get there and traffic was fast. Coming back to the beach I ran into a traffic jam at the Hampton Roads tunnel. I was glad to find this new park. The signs are there to tell you where to turn off 17 and on the country roads. Then I couldn’t find the park exit and must have driven past it twice but finally found the exit.
I’d have to say it’s worth the drive but it’s too far away to do a painting there since I’d have to go back a lot of times to finish something. I took my sketchbook but after walking for a couple miles on the trail I went back to the car and got my camera because I was too tired to sketch by then.
That was today’s adventure. I’m still exploring tidewater VA.