Drive just past the entrance to historic Jamestown on your left, and the road will end at the free Jamestown-Scotland Ferry. With three boats chugging cheerily across the James River all day long, the short 15-minute crossing affords you a very pretty backward glance at the Jamestown Monument and the three replica ships. Get out of your car to enjoy the birds swooping and cawing madly.

What to do when you get to the other side? Not much…although you’ll enjoy the ride along country roads to the small town of Smithfield where you’ll find The Genuine Smithfield Ham Shoppe on Main street, a yummy bakery appropriately called Yummies – and a darling home goods store (Wharf Hill). Have lunch or breakfast at the Smithfield Inn before making your way around the corner to Mansion House Art and Antiques at 120 Church street, a great destination for antique lovers.

Of course, you can always just turn around and take the ferry back again.  Did we mention it is free?

Tip:  En route to Smithfield, you’ll pass Bacon’s Castle, a yet-to-be restored plantation house of Nathaniel Bacon (of Bacon’s rebellion fame) built in 1665. Reasons to stop here are two-fold:

• Just before turning down the entrance to the plantation, pull into the little roadside cottage to buy some of their famous Virginia peanuts. The shop's sign is clearly visible from the road.

• Read the love letter etched into the glass pane of Bacon’s Castle’s drawing room window (now removed for safekeeping, but kept on display). A wedding weekend is the perfect time to read the moving words of love and devotion that Dr. Robert Emmett Robinson penned to his wife, Indiana, in December of 1838:

“Thou are but a little tablet on which to inscribe a record of human happiness and yet these words may be found here even after both of our heads may have been lain in the dust, so uncertain is everything connected with human life! We are happy now, dearest Nan, enjoying all the blessings of health, prosperity and mutual affection…. May the hope for a happy reunion in a world where care or sorrow are never known, cheer the heart and brighten the sufferings of the one of us who by the death of the other may be left in this cheerless world desolate and alone.”