Richmond Riverfront & Maymont park.

This morning Karen said she wanted to visit the city of Richmond and initially that made me a little uneasy as I used to go into the city for the last 3-1/2 years! My excitement for this trip was to get out of the city and the hustle and bussel. Normally, I grin and bear it through the city tours, because I'm the driver which tends to be stressful.  We are driving a Dodge Mega cab Dually - this is no small vehicle by any stretch of the imagination, as a matter of fact, its like a small land barge! There are also a lot of instructions that come last minute like "we need to make a left now" as we are in the right lane or we should of turned there. Today on the other hand went smooth as silk!  We started off going to the Riverfront in downtown Richmond where they explained to us, via a boat tour, the very interesting way in which goods were shipped inland through a series of canals and locks.  They went on to teach us that George Washington was instrumental in planning and building the canal system in which goods that came in, via the James river, could be transferred and shipped as far west as the Mississippi river!  While on the tour Bryson decided to pull out his front tooth and hand it to me! After the boat tour the family was hungry, and Bryson needed a container for his tooth, so we decided on a local hot dog shop called City dogs.  It was a great little restaurant right in the city on a cobblestone road with really good hot dogs and brats! 

From there we went to a park called Maymont Park, which turned out to be a diamond in the rough!  The park was like eye candy to everyone.  It had exotic gardens like you have never seen.  A beautiful Italian Garden, Karen's favorite, a Japanese garden with bamboo forests that had little trails through them, and coy ponds with stepping stones in the pond.   There were a many great climbing trees for the kids too.  There was also a zoo/animal rehab center, so there were many animals for the kids to see and a beautiful mansion at the center of it all! We spent a good 3 hours there and the best part was it was free to the public with a donation box if you wanted to donate which we did!  I would highly recommend this park to anyone as day trip with the kids!