A Mustard Yellow Stop

Look what we found today on Route 20. A great place to stop and practice reading the word "Montpelier"!

I love this mustard yellow train station. Though half of it still functions as the post office for Montpelier Station, Virginia, the other half has been preserved as an exhibit of a typical train station in the early 1900s. We toured both the "White" and "Colored" sides of the station. The differences were clear, but segregation is too abstract of an idea for them to be affected it standing in an empty train station.

We were the only visitors there and there wasn't a guide on duty, so the kids experimented as they please marching in and out of the door to order train tickets. We spent a long time trying out the gadgets of the day--the telegraph, telephone, and typewriter. 

It's such a treat to discover historical gems in such unexpected places. It helped that day was perfectly sunny and that we had already had a perfect morning at J's Cub Scout camporee at Montpelier (James and Dolly's home) itself.