As soon as Melissa and I got back from our epic, ~2,800 mile road-trip to Oklahoma, we celebrated our anniversary with a three-day weekend in Colonial Beach, Virginia and the surrounding region. Colonial Beach is a town located on the Potomac River coast of Virginia’s Northern Neck. The town was a popular destination for vacationers from the Washington, DC, metro area, at least until the Chesapeake Bay Bridge opened in 1952 and made it much easier to drive to more-distant ocean beaches.
Melissa and I enjoy the laid-back atmosphere of the Northern Neck, so we end up spending a lot of our anniversaries out that-way. You may remember last year’s trip, where we made a stop at the George Washington Birthplace National Monument (which is actually near Colonial Beach) on the way back.
Anyway, when we drove out on Saturday, May 25, we went straight to Stratford Hall, the birthplace of Robert E. Lee, which is actually twenty miles (give or take) past Colonial Beach. down the Northern Neck. After that, we back-tracked to Colonial Beach and took some photos and had some dinner. We ended up staying at a hotel further to the northwest in Dahlgren, Virginia, near the U.S. 301 bridge over the Potomac into Maryland.
On Sunday we went to Mass at Saint Elizabeth of Hungary Catholic Church in Colonial Beach, took a bunch more photos, dropped by the birthplace of President James Monroe (Democratic-Republican)—a roadside obelisk where there will, someday, be a museum—and then drove around aimlessly for a while. On Monday we slept in, relaxed, and drove home. It was a wonderful, relaxing, largely stress-free weekend. Photos below!
