There are many things to see in Lexington and today we scratched the surface. As I mentioned in yesterday’s entry, this town — in fact, this entire area — has a lot of Civil War history.

We started off at the Lexington Visitor Center where the guide drew a walking tour on a map of the downtown area. Of the 45 historic buildings described on the map, we walked by about 15 of them and stopped to visit three of them. This took us about four hours.

The very first thing we saw was this plaque on Washington Street, downtown Lexington:

I always suspected that such a place existed, but who knew it would be downtown Lexingon?

Next stop was the Stonewall Jackson Memorial Cemetery. As the name implies, it has a memorial to Stonewall Jackson. People place two things at the base of his memorial. Confederate flags and lemons. Why lemons? According to this source, Jackson was very concerned about his diet and followed a diet that emphasized fruits and vegetables. While he might have been seen eating lemons on a number of occasions, the idea that he preferred lemons over other fruits appears to be more legend than fact. Still, that’s what people remember, I guess, so they leave lemons as a tribute.

Did you know that the Virginia state tree is the Dogwood?

We’re seeing these everywhere in our travels through Virginia.

Our next stop was the Lee Chapel and Museum on the campus of Washington and Lee University. Inside the chapel is a museum about the University and Robert E. Lee, the Lee family mausoleum, and Robert E. Lee’s office that he used up to the time of his death. No photography was allowed inside Lee Chapel, so I’m afraid all I can show you is pictures of the outside. However, the Lee Chapel and Museum web site has plenty of details about the interior and it’s contents, if you’re interested. The photo below on the left is a view of Washington and Lee University from the front door of Lee Chapel. The photo on the right is a view of Lee Chapel from the University.

Outside Lee Chapel and Museum is a memorial to Traveller, Robert E. Lee’s horse during the Civil War.

After the Lee Chapel and Museum, we stopped by local bakery for a cookie and something to drink. As we sat outside, tours of the city in horse-drawn carriages would pass by.

After this mid-afternoon break, we headed back to the hotel to start making preparations for our departure tomorrow morning. Our destination tomorrow is Harrisonburg, Virginia.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 3rd, 2006 at 5:33 pm and is filed under The Dream Tour. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.