Grant's Birthplace. It's kind a quirky thing. My folks took me there for the first time back about 1965. It was a Sunday ride up river after church, one of those adventures that my dad was meant to "Blow the sink off." We drove all the way to Mount Pleasant and. . . Closed.
Now you have to understand that the birthplace of U.S. Grant is no big deal. It's just this little white house off RT 52. You can pretty much see the whole thing through the windows. The ride on RT 52 is really spectacular-- better than the crappy little house. I make the trip once or twice a year just for the view, only I stop short of going all the way to Mt Pleasant. I take the ferry at Augusta.
It's a rare thing that I am all the way out there. Maybe once every 5-10 years. The next time I remember going to Grant's Birthplace was in 1967. My folks stopped by on the way to our grand tour of Williamsburg, Monticello, Jamestown, Yorktown, Mt Vernon-- the obligatory American History trip of childhood. Guess what we found? Closed.
My next try was when we had Driver's Ed in 1974. The instructor and 3 of my high school chums went the whole way on a hot August afternoon. Closed.
Since then I've been out that way dozens of times. Most of the time it's in the winter; Grant's Birthplace is closed after September. I don't even check. It's become a real thing. My guess is that I'll have to wait until I retire and go up on a weekday in the summer.
http://www.usgrantbirthplace.org/
