Sometimes you get to the ninth day of the second to last month of the year and realize that your longtime collaborative project is due to run the very next day. You haven’t prepped photos or put together a cohesive plan of any sort, and so you search through the archives of the previous month and come up with the following.

It’s Richmond, Virginia, folks.

First! Here are the fellow travelers for the month:

On a good month I try to have a little bit more intention with these 10-on-10 posts. Consider what it is I want to explore and share with you, and how I want to photograph it. It’s really a “best laid plan” situation on many occasions and perhaps that will be nowhere more evident than with this installation here today.

Last weekend we went to Richmond for some good ol’ fashioned homecoming hoopla at Dan’s alma mater. I took along my little Fuji x100 and of course the trusty fancy phone, but didn’t plan on taking many photos. Having only been to Richmond one time before I was hoping to simply take in more of the city and the history of the region. But as our personal history of scheduling too many things in a short amount of time has illustrated over and over again, we really only had one afternoon to do the sort of sightseeing I was looking for. Thus, here are 10 photos from the haphazard and fast-fast sightseeing excursion that we should probably just go ahead and trademark already.

When we arrived at the Virginia State Capitol, we had only 15 minutes to see the place before it shut down for the evening. The greeter at the front desk warned us we must move very quickly if we wished to see the historical bits…and then proceeded to describe — at great length — the journey that we must take from the entrance, up a few flights of stairs (“or perhaps you would prefer to take the ramp up the east side of the building, which would instead direct you here, to this hallway….”) in order to reach the Old Hall of the House of Delegates, the Old Senate Chamber, etc. After agreeing to walk with all haste and promising that we would keep our eyes peeled for the George Washington statue that would signal our arrival, we got through the metal detectors and began to ascend to the old chambers.

I would like to enter into the record here a note of humility. Because, as you may detect in the previous paragraph, we left that front desk feeling a bit smug and irritated that our very limited and precious amount of time would be so compromised by the earnest, rambling directions of a kindly volunteer. So of course we got lost. I hear you, karma, I hear you.

But eventually, we managed to ascend the proper number of levels out of the basement into this rotunda. There stood George, a full-sized statue carved from marble in the 1790s that is said to have been viewed “by many of Washington’s contemporaries, all of whom attested that it was a perfect likeness.”

△△ The Old Hall of the House of Delegates. A great many things occurred in this chamber, from votes cast in the post-Revolutionary War years, through action enabled during the Civil War, all the way until 1904 when the general assembly moved to different rooms within the building. I definitely encourage you all to take a closer look. It’s a history that is fascinating, important and in many ways still entirely relevant to our nation today.

But, with our 15-minutes up and spent, we turned around and headed for the exit.

And yes, we got lost again.

Another stop on our visit that day was to Hollywood Cemetery, famously known for being the final resting place of 2 1/2 presidents. (Yes, it took me a minute to understand that statement.) US Presidents James Monroe and John Tyler are both buried here, as well as Jefferson Davis, who served as the president of the Confederate States of America for four years during the Civil War. And hence, not a full-fledged president of the nation.

And for the final stop on our tour, the University of Richmond, the place that started this whole visit in the first place. (And by “our tour” I mean this little recap here today, because it just occurred to me that for reasons entirely unexplainable I have structured this post in reverse-chronological order from how Dan and I explored the city that day last weekend.)

UR is a beautiful and small liberal arts university. There are something like 3,200 undergrads on campus (which is roughly 1/10th of the student population at my own alma mater; it boggles the mind), and their mascot is a spider (which boggles the mind even further). But it’s gorgeous, lush and splendid in its architectural offerings. It feels academic in every way.

Particularly when you meet these fellows.

Their existence and purpose and story were never adequately explained to me so feel free to fill in the tale with your most wild imaginings. Frankly, given the backwards and quick nature of this visit, I think that’s as good a place as any to leave you today.