Williamsburg-Lesser Known Sites Worth a Visit!

It's not a long stretch to understand how a candle factory might find a home in an area that celebrates colonial life! Candles were a mainstay of life and light in those bygone times and have now become a sought after commodity for setting a mood or creating a sense of peace and tranquility.

At this site, the actual process of modern and ancient candle-making comes together. While some of the machinery is mechanized, they still use the dip it over and over and over technique to build up the diameter of the candle. You can tour the factory where you'll see the huge automated wheels of "candles-in-the-making" that get dipped into even larger vats of molten wax. Today, the Williamsburg Soap and Candle Company turns out 6 million candles a year. The workers will talk about what is necessary to make the candle smooth and how they occasionally cut off the bottoms spikes to make sure the candle comes out with a flat bottom. This is basically the same method used 200 years ago only on a much grandeur scale. They will also demonstrate how they make some of the specialty candles such as the twisted or carved varieties.

They also check the candles for straightness and blemishes, no matter how tiny. Any small problem sends the candle to the wholesale counters right there in the factory outlet store. This is where shopping becomes fun. You can purchase factory seconds, overruns, closeouts and test market specials found only at this location for next to nothing!... and I couldn't really find any blemishes worth mentioning! But perhaps even better, they also sell there finest candles at greatly reduced prices since shipping consists of walking the product 50 yards or so! We were there just before Halloween and some of the specialty candles for both the fall and Christmas holidays were out in full force. It was beautiful.

There are also several other stores that are part of the Soap and Candle Co. There is a Christmas House that sells Christmas decorations year round; a colonial/primitive home decor shop called Barney's Country Store; a store called Needlecraft Corner with a large selection; a Tapestry store and a restaurant that features home cooked meals.

Their phone number is 757-564-3354 and the website is www.candlefactory.com. We spent several hours here and enjoyed it very much. So if you're looking for something a bit different while in Williamsburg I think you'll enjoy the Williamsburg Soap and Candle Co.!

"Let's see where this road leads. It's going the right direction -- towards Yorktown . . . ." We weren't really lost, just sort of following our noses as it were, trying to end up at the Yorktown battlefield. Suddenly the trees that had been overhanging the road on both sides parted and we were right along side the York River. High up above us Route 17 buzzed its traffic across the river. When we finally brought our eyes down to earth there was a beautiful model of an old sailing ship right in front of us and next to it was the Watermen's Museum. "You suppose that's the name of the guy who donated the land?" I asked my husband. "I don't know . . . Do you want to go in?" This last said with the resignation of a man whose wife hadn't missed a museum or trinket shop anywhere along the road . . . ." Yeah, let’s see what it's all about." (He's a good man . . . the set of his mouth got only it bit tighter.)

It turns out the Watermen’s Museum is about the Chesapeake Bay men who worked on the water! The only other place in the world where these workers are called watermen is in England. Their jobs might be fishing, ferrying or working on a boat. They could be common laborers or captains but they all worked on the water in and about Chesapeake Bay.

There are displays of boats, old historic maps and navigational charts. There are displays of tools used by these men. There are photographs and other written records that tell the story of one of the oldest colonial habitations in the United States. The Museum also supports educational programs for both children (school programs) and adults (Lifelong Learning Program) and offers memberships to those interested in helping preserve the memory of this ongoing activity. They have a unique gift shop where local artisans sell their wares; you can pick up a specialty cookbook of seafood recipes; or you can find books and tapes about the Bay area including lighthouse info. (They also run a coupon in the "Colonial Guide" free magazine.)

This is a relatively young museum, started in 1981, but it chronicles and preserves information that would certainly have been lost without its existence. They rent out there dock behind the museum to the "Yorktown Lady" which does cruises on the Bay highlighting information about both history and wildlife. The museum's phone number is 757-887-2641. There website is www.watermens.org.

Do you like sweets? If you follow Route 60 west out of Williamsburg and keep looking on the right side of the road, you will find the Candy Story Factory Warehouse Outlet. This is a factory and also an outlet store. For the factory part, they have several windows you can look through and watch the twisting of strand to make peppermint sticks or the cutting of small bits off a long log for taffy. They also make all kinds of chocolate variations including at least 15 kinds of fudge. The factory is closed off and the public views the process for several reasons. First, the ingredients are being mixed and the candy is actually being made here. There is no way to guarantee a sanitary environment if the general public was let in to watch. And second, there is a lot of heat produced in the factory and they want to keep the outlet store cool.

My all-time favorite candy is Maple Sugar Candy and since I now live in the mid-west, it’s hard to find. In fact, it’s hard to find anywhere outside of New England. However they had it here! I bought three boxes and took their card so I could order more by mail. If you have a favorite candy, I’ll bet they have it also. Here is a partial list of some of the items they carry: candy, honey, BBQ sauces, VA peanuts, bread mixes of all kinds, cider, soup mixes, apple butter, peach butter, Chesapeake Bay Crab Products and Arts of the Table products. They advertise over 10,000 lbs. of candy in the shop at any one time. Watch for coupons in the "giveaway magazine" called "Colonial Guide". It’s available all over Williamsburg. We saw a dollar off each pound of fudge you buy.

While this probably isn’t a destination, it is a nice side trip. Their phone number is 757-464-1151. I’ve included a couple of pictures below for your information. One is a picture of the building which is very helpful if you’re looking for something along the road and the other is a sampling of the candy they offer. These pictures are photographs of an ad in the Colonial Guide mentioned above.

Nauticus is the home of the National Maritime Center, The Hampton Roads Navel Museum and the Battleship Wisconsin. It is located right downtown Norfolk VA and as we were to discover, is a port for ships of many kinds. One of the mega cruise ships, Royal Caribbean's Triumph of the Seas was loading passengers while we were there. The presence of the cruise ship offered an interesting perspective for the Battleship Wisconsin, which is permanently docked alongside Nauticus. The battleship looked almost as long as the cruise ship, but was build for speed and efficiency. The cruise ship was taller and bulkier and obviously was for more leisurely activities.

There are quite a few things to do at Nauticus and many of them are geared for children. There are interactive displays throughout the building. In one you can pretend to be a gunner on a battleship. In another, you can touch a shark. Kids seemed to be having a great time . . . and there were A LOT OF KIDS THERE! It was obvious to us that this is a popular site for school trips. One of our main interests was taking a boat tour of the Naval Shipyard. You can purchase tickets for this in the Nauticus. We choose the 2 hour cruise aboard the Victory Rover (phone #: 757-627-7405; website: www.navalbasecruises.com). The boat is a double-decker with an air-conditioned windowed cabin on the first floor and an open deck with chairs upstairs. Actually the day we were there (mid-Oct.) was chilly so the people up top kept coming inside to get warm! The tour departs from a pier about 500 yards. from Nauticus, so it is very handy. We saw several huge cargo container ships and many different types of naval vessels, however, the aircraft carrier had just left a couple days before. We did see several nuclear submarines and different types of battle ships. I bought a card that is supposed to help you identify what you're seeing, but frankly it was easier listening to the narrative that came over the loudspeakers. As a result, I don't know the ship types for any of the pictures I've enclosed. Those of you with military knowledge can fill in the blanks.

The Hampton Roads Naval Museum is on the second floor of Nauticus. It begins with the revolutionary war and talks about the role of the Navy through the many conflicts in our countries history. Many of the displays are pictures and uniforms of the various time periods. At the end of that tour is the entrance to the Battleship Wisconsin. My understanding is that battleships like the Wisconsin are no longer being built. This is one of the last. You can purchase a self guided audio tour for around $3 that fills in information about the various things you will see on the deck. The most impressive parts of the ship are the huge forward 16" gun batteries. We have a 3-D camera and I wish we could share that picture with you. The guns are BIG (see picture below). The ship is still owned by the navy but is leased to the Naval Museum for now. The Wisconsin was in many battles and has earned 5 battle stars. I truly don't know what that means, but it is one of the facts told to us by one of the volunteers on the ship. Many, if not all these volunteers are former sailors who served on the Wisconsin. The amount of information they have is overwhelming at times!

Another part of the Nauticus complex is NOAA National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration. I love weather stuff so this was high on our list. On the 3rd floor of Nauticus is their exhibit called 95,000 Miles of Coastal Knowledge. It explains the part NOAA has in keeping ships safe that are approaching the U.S. They can be reached at: Phone: (757) 627-7072 E-mail: jim.dixon@nauticus.noaa.gov.

There is also a Tupboat Museum that we didn't have time to see. The admission costs for Nauticus are: adults $9.95, children (4-12) $7.50, AAA/Senior/Military $8.95, children 3 and under are free. It is a place of many piece parts and I think most anyone of any age can find something to do here.

How odd to write an entry about a bridge . . . However, this bridge has been named one of the seven wonders of the engineering world and Virginia Beach, VA is at one end of this marvel. In fact, the Discovery Channel has devoted an entire hour to understanding how this combination bridge/tunnel was conceived, constructed and improved as the years have gone by.

The story, according to geologists starts when this world was very young. A comet or asteroid struck the earth forming Chesapeake Bay. If you're not used to the area -- and we weren't -- the roadways are a maze of bridges, tunnels, and land based roadways. The James River looks more like a bay itself and the York River isn't much smaller. But it all comes together and dumps into Chesapeake Bay. By all accounts this Bay is rather inhospitable. It can direct the waves of hurricanes on shore in the summer and fall, and then winter adds strong winds and stinging cold spray. In fact, in the middle of building this structure a hurricane came along and sunk an expensive boat used in constructing the bridges. We were there on a late fall day where the stinging cold spray was all too real.

We entered the structure from the Virginia Beach side and paid a toll of $10.00. You rise up off the beach and ascend a high bridge (clearance 75 ft.), then come back down to level off at about 30 feet off the water just before the bridge makes a wide sweeping 90 degree turn. The northbound lanes (the side we drove on first,) make up the original bridge, which was finished in 1964. There was one lane going each way until a second parallel bridge was added in 1999 allowing for two lanes going in either direction.

After the turn you will drive straight until you get to the first of four man-made islands. Yes, man-made islands. There was 300,000 tons of rock and 1,500,000 tons of sand, most of which came from the floor of the bay used in making these islands. Each of the four islands is an entrance or exit for a tunnel. The first, coming from our direction was called Thimble Shoal Tunnel and the second was called Chesapeake Channel Tunnel (both about a mile long.) On the first island of the Thimble Shoal Tunnel (the southernmost island), there is a long fishing pier as well as a restaurant and souvenir store. We stopped and had a lunch of hot dogs and watched several large ships pass over the tunnel and out into the Atlantic Ocean.

After lunch we continued through the second tunnel and then onto a bridge which allows an 75 ft. clearance. Lastly we descended down onto the Delmarva Peninsula. We drove a short ways, did a U-turn and drove back on the new side. The main difference between the ‘64 side and the ‘99 side is the presence of a shoulder. The ‘99 has one and the ‘64 doesn’t. The entire bridge carries U.S. Rt. 13 just under 18 miles and allows you to drive 55 MPH. The water is between 25 and 100 feet in depth. I hope you get the opportunity to either drive the bridge or see the Discovery Channel piece on it. What an amazing engineering feat.