I Heart National Parks: Monticello-Home of my favorite president, Thomas Jefferson

This past weekend, the hubby and I went to Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home. So, I know what you are thinking, Monticello is not a national park. However, Monticello is a World Heritage Site, which means it meets certain criteria set by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. You can read more about those criteria at their website (click here). Plus, Thomas Jefferson is my favorite president and I've wanted to visit this place for a long time, so you are gonna hear about it.

Hubby and I got a later start that day than we wanted, so we didn't get to Monticello until about 1 pm. The first thing we did was went to buy tickets to tour the house. Tickets for adults are $22 dollars a piece, but it was money we were happy to spend. When you but a ticket, you are given a tour time for the house. Ours wasn't until 2:50 pm, so we had some time to kill. We decided we would check out the area around the house first. Had to grab pics of Thomas Jefferson's statue first.

Hubby with good old Thomas Jefferson.

There are two options of getting to the home, a free shuttle bus offered every 5 minutes, or a nice little trail that you can walk. The trail is not a bad walk, only .60 miles. Plus, it takes you past Jefferson's grave.

Jefferson and his descendants are buried in a family plot on the Monticello property. Descendants are still being buried there to this day.

It started raining as soon as we got to the burial ground, which actually made it quite pretty to see.

Some of the older graves in the burial ground.

Thomas Jefferson's headstone. He only wanted to be remembered for three things: authoring the Declaration of Independence, authoring the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and founding the University of Virginia.

After seeing the burial ground, we started making our way towards the house. One thing that is really wonderful is that they actively maintain gardens, much like Thomas Jefferson did when he lived on the property.

Fig trees. Reminds me of grandparents, who had a fig tree in their yard.

They also maintain a vineyard. The rain had stopped and the mist was rolling in. It was such a lovely site to see.

Watermelon

Cow's Horn Okra (Hibiscus esculentus)

After wandering the gardens for a bit, we decided to look at the outside area of the house. This is the side of the house where you enter for the tour.

There are all sorts of flowers surrounding the house. More of that later.

Blackberry Lily (Belamcanda chinensis)

What is really interesting is that all of the space under the house was fully utilized for things such as the kitchen, stables, and wine cellars. Some pictures of that are below.

Ye olde toilet.

They maintained an ice house and would pack it full of ice and snow once wintered rolled around. They could keep ice for up to 10 months.

Looking down into the ice house.

Outside of ice house.

Stables

After walking around under one side of the house, we decided to check out the gardens. They gift shop actually sells the seeds for most of the plants that you see. I'll try to identify what plants I can for you in the captions below.

Can't remember what these are, sorry.

Joseph's Coat (Amaranthus tricolor)

Spider Flower (Cleome hasslerana)

Love-lies-bleeding (Amaranthus caudatus)

Don't know these, sorry again.

Pink Spiked Celosia (Celosia cristata)

Cockscomb (Celosia cristata)

Huge tree, which what seems like the perfect sitting spot.

The molted exoskeleton of a cicada.

Cyprus Vine (Ipomoea quamoclit)

Possibly some sort of crab apple tree

Cardinal Flower (Lobelia cardinalis)

Now you can see the view of the house that it is known for.

More from the flower gardens.

I think this is Double Columbine (Aquilegia vulgaris plena)

Bloodflower (Asclepias curassavica)

French Mallow (Malva sylvestris)

More Spider Flowers

Foxglove (Digitalis purpurea)

Can't figure out what these are either.

Don't know these either.

Let's just say, there are no fish in here presently.

After we finished investigating the gardens, we walked underneath the other side of the house.

Do you see the lone spider?

The kitchen

Wine cellar

One of the original doors from the home. It was
encased in glas so it remained protected.

After checking all of this out, we went on the tour of the house. Unfortunately, no pictures were allowed :( We saw some pretty cool stuff though. They had a pair of elk antlers that were sent to Jefferson from the original Lewis and Clark expedition. They had bones from a mastodon that were in Jefferson's possession. We loved the library, which still had two shelves of Jefferson's original books. He actually sold several of his books to the Library of Congress after Washington D.C. was burned, and those are still on display there today. They had several pieces of art owned by Jefferson as well. It was quite stunning inside. Unfortunately, with the normal tour, you only get to see the first floor. There is a behind the scenes tour available, for $37 a person, but those only run at certain times a day. That tour will take you to the other floors and to the dome room. The tour lasted about 40 minutes.

Trunk of a very large tree.

Views of the countryside around the home.

Grave of one of the previous owner's daughters, I think.
Don't quote me on that.

Chimney from the old joinery.

They had lots of these little guys floating around.

Thomas Jefferson seal on the fence surrounding the burial ground.

Afterwards, hubby and I checked out the museum, which is well put together. They also have a short film on Jefferson you can watch. There is also a great hand's on kid area if you have little ones you are bringing with you. There is also an African American burial ground for the slaves that worked at Monticello. I was a little disappointed by the fact that a parking lot was built around it. I thought that was a tad disrespectful.

As you may know, there is some controversy surrounding Jefferson and his relationship with a slave named Sally Hemings. This is mentioned during the tour as an alleged relationship, though some DNA testing has shown otherwise. NPR actually did a recent piece on it, which you can read about (click here).

Hubby and I spend the night in Charlottesville. It had a great downtown area with shops and restaurants lining it. Not a bad place for a little one night get away.

Since we were in the area, I insisted that we drive through the Green Springs National Historic Landmark District, well part of it anyway. We followed the directions from the park service website, but actually didn't see many homes. I think one has to drive off onto some of the side roads, that unfortunately, that wasn't going to happen this time. Next time we go to Monticello, I'll plan a little better in hopes of seeing more of the homes associated with this site.