Only in Virginia will you find the founding site of the English colonies, the birthplaces of eight U.S. presidents, and a historic natural bridge. Here you'll find more Civil War battlefields than in any other state as well as the capital of the Confederacy.

These attractions are well known, but Virginia's offbeat attractions can be just as intriguing. The Old Dominion boasts the nation's oldest continuously held sporting event - a jousting tournament. It's also home to the nation's last poled ferry, the largest armored tank museum, the first drug abuse museum, and the only peanut museum/folk-art gallery.

Explore Virginia's smaller, quirkier, largely undiscovered sites this year and beat the crowds.

American Armored Foundation Tank Museum

3401 U.S. Highway 29B, Danville (434) 836-5323; www.aaftankmuseum.com

Don't let the name fool you - this museum is about a lot more than its 113 tanks and artillery pieces. Not that 62-ton Patton tanks (and Iraqi tanks, German tanks, even a Swedish tank) aren't impressive. But this huge museum housed in a former tool factory not only claims the nation's most extensive collection of international tank and cavalry artifacts in the world, but houses more than 15,000 other artifacts from 1509 to the present.

These include 150 machine guns, 1,300 pieces of headgear and 1,600 uniforms for men, women and children. There's an international military bicycle display, including a rugged specimen used by the Viet Cong to haul 400-pound loads. An area the size of three suburban homes is laid out as Belgian countryside in the largest indoor radio-control-tank battlefield in the world. The splashing river, 1/16th scale village and a smoking ruins provide a spectacular setting for remote tank battles held several times each year. You'll also encounter Elvis, who served in the 3rd Army tank corps, as well as two stuffed Civil War horses and a glowing model spaceship. Truly something for everyone.

DEA Museum

700 Army-Navy Drive

(next to Pentagon City Mall), Arlington

(202) 307-3463; www.usdoj.gov/dea/deamuseum/museum_visitors.html

Anyone who thinks drug use in America began in the era of Jimi Hendrix will be surprised by the Drug Enforcement Administration museum's dis-play on the persistence of drugs in U.S. history.

The 1861 diary entry of the wife of a Civil War officer suggested a sedated domestic existence: "I sat up too late hearing Mrs. Davis, who told me unutterable stories of the war - but I forgot after so much opium." A diorama of a 1930s pharmacy shows Bayer heroin tablets and cocaine baby cough syrup available on the shelf. The exhibit chronicles the hold narcotics have had on American lives since the Chinese brought opium to the Gold Rush and Western railroads.

Displays also celebrate the DEA's great busts and show agents posed with their drug quarry. The museum, in the lobby of DEA headquarters, is the first in America to focus on drug abuse. A gift shop features DEA Beanie Babies, DEA Christmas ornaments, and fine DEA jewelry with the Special Agent emblem.

Douthat State Park, Millboro

(540) 862-8100; www.dcr.state.va.us/parks/douthat.htm

Douthat State Park was voted one of the nation's 10 best parks for families by Outside magazine in recent years.

The picturesque, 1930s-era park has many Civilian Conservation Corps features such as hand-carved wooden doorknobs and hinges, as well as hand-wrought iron hardware, light fixtures and door latches in its lodges. Douthat is a registered U.S. Historic District and has won high awards from the American Society of Landscape Architects.

Campers love fishing for citation pickerel in 150-acre Douthat Lake and or trout in its adjoining stream. Cyclists call the park's 40 miles of single track trails "mountain bike Disneyland" for their challenge and variety. The park also includes a sandy swimming beach, boat rentals, cabins, conference facilities, an amphitheater, playgrounds, tent and trailer camping and a restaurant.

Hatton Ferry, Scottsville

www.hattonferry.org

Thanks to the Virginia Department of Transportation, you can still ride across the James River on the nation's last remaining poled ferry.

Hatton Ferry, at Route 625 west of Scottsville, transports vehicles across the river two cars at a time. You can ride this relic of a bygone era free of charge on Saturdays and Sundays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. mid-April through mid-October.

The Hatton Ferry began operating across this narrow section of the James in the 1870s. Since the Department of Highways took it over in 1940, the ferry has been destroyed by floods twice and rebuilt of metal. As a safety precaution, travelers don life vests for the trip. The riverbank site is a popular picnic spot and the headquarters for a river outfitter. For river conditions, call (434) 286-2338.

Jeane Dixon Museum and Library, Strasburg

130 N. Massanutten St., Strasburg; (540) 465-5884

Jeane Dixon was the best known psychic of the past 50 years, a headliner in supermarket tabloids and a regular on TV talk shows. You can gaze into her crystal ball, admire her religious art and examine articles about her various predictions - and buy some of her tables, chairs, and books - at the museum dedicated to her in the Shenandoah Valley.

Dixon, who died in 1997, was best known for predicting President John F. Kennedy's 1963 assassination, in Parade Magazine back in 1956. The museum interprets Dixon's life through her possessions but lets visitors decide whether the Washington, D.C., realtor was truly psychic.

Displays lead you from Dixon's birth in Wisconsin in 1904 (she liked to say it was 1918), through her short singing career, her marriage and her meetings with presidents and celebrities. You can hear an audio clip of Dixon making a prediction, view her notes on Nostradamus' forecasts and see her ornate, gold-crowned bed that once belonged to French Empress Eugenie.

Natural Chimneys Regional Park, Mount Solon

Virginia 731, Mount Solon; (540) 350-2510

The giant limestone "natural chimneys," each 9- to 12-stories tall, create the illusion of a great castle - the perfect backdrop for the annual jousting tournament touted as "America's oldest continually held sporting event."

What better setting than Natural Chimneys Regional Park to hear "Charge, Sir Knight" and the clang of iron lances? Natural Chimneys has been home to a jousting tournament on the third Saturday of August since 1821, when legend has it a young lady who couldn't decide between two suitors was persuaded to settle the matter with a joust. She married the winner, and the tournament became an annual event.

Now jousting is open to maids as well as knights (and the occasional knave). Images of sharp lances piercing the armor of an opponent have been replaced by a more civilized test of skill in which riders gallop down a track and attempt to spear three small steel rings with their lances.

The park is home to the National Jousting Hall of Fame, as well as a swimming pool, hiking trails, campsites and birdwatching venues.

Peanut Museum and Miles B. Carpenter Folk Art Museum, Waverly

U.S. 460, Waverly, Va.; (804) 834-3327 or (804) 834-2151.

Before the coal shed behind the Miles B. Carpenter Folk Art Museum was converted into a repository of peanut information, visitors traveling through the sandy fields of southeastern Virginia would stop with a question that drove Shirley Yancey nuts.

"Where can we see the peanut trees?" they'd ask. "The peanut is not a nut; it's a legume. It grows in the ground," says Yancey, director of the museum's board. Now she directs them to the Peanut Museum, where the peanut plant is featured in detail on a T-shirt. The 15-year-old museum is the First Peanut Museum in the U.S.A. The 10-by-10 structure also has to be the smallest peanut museum as well, and certainly the only one combined with a folk art museum. The Miles Carpenter museum, honoring one of Virginia's most famous folk artists, contains about 60 pieces of his whimsical carvings, from grinning serpents to Elvis.

The Peanut Museum combines a little folk art of its own - a Mr. Peanut made with masking tape and a collection of peanut-shell characters - as well as tools of the trade: needles for sewing peanut bags; a pea-popper; and a roaster.

The building is decorated with black and white photographs showing the peanut cultivation and production process of yesteryear and has curtains made of burlap peanut sack.

History, especially peanut history, is important here. Tradition has it that in 1842, Matthew Harris grew the nation's first commercial peanut crop in a field southeast of town. A highway marker commemorating the spot sits along U.S. 460.

American Celebrations on Parade, Shenandoah Caverns

397 Caverns Road, Shenandoah Caverns; (540) 477-4300;

www.americancelebrationonparade.com.

The parade has stopped for you at American Celebrations on Parade, one of the nation's largest parade museums.

You can examine the mechanics of inaugural floats, admire the hand-tufted satin, even climb aboard a few of these veterans of American ceremony. A stunning collection of floats from the Rose Parade, Presidential inaugurations and Thanksgiving parades, the museum was opened in 2000 by the Hargrove company that has crafted inaugural floats since Harry Truman.

In the airplane hangar-size showcase for award-winning parade floats is a fantastical realm of giant singing ducks, playful bears, stately eagles and fearsome dragons made of powder puffs. Favorites are a flag float from Ronald Reagan's inauguration and the Wyoming float - equipped with a 1,000-gallon waterfall - honoring Dick Cheney during George W. Bush's first inauguration.