We did not exactly arrive early to Virginia Beach, although at least it was still daylight when we got there. We arrived at the beach just as the sun was beginning to set, and I was able to snap this picture, which I think looks beautiful!
Okay, so, this is really, really late! I mean, we left for the trip to the South on June 23rd, exactly a month ago as I write this. Since then, the trip has finished, I went back to work, went back on another, longer vacation, and have returned back to work yet again.
As I mentioned in an earlier post just a couple of days ago, I have this whole other trip to download pictures (and there are many of them!!) and to write about.
Yet, I did not even (yet) publish anything about my earlier trip to the South! And it's high time that I did already, since these were already mostly written, and just needed a little bit of editing. So, here goes:
So yes, finally, finally, FINALLY, I made it down to the South. At least, a decent part of it.
Given that I have lived much of my life really only hours away from this region, it was one of the things that I felt should have been done a long time ago.
Yet, I had never been, until this trip late last month.
Now, technically, you can say I had been to some of the states that have been considered "the South". I had been to Virginia, for example, which was a slave state and a Confederate state, as well as a Jim Crow state more recently. I had also been to Maryland and Delaware numerous times each, and both of those, too, also had been slave states and Jim Crow states, although they had not opted to secede from the Union and join the Confederacy. Ditto with West Virginia, which I first made it to in 2004 (visiting Harper's Ferry, a prominent historical site dating back to the Civil War), and also with Kentucky, which felt like a true Southern state when i went there, based on the local accent, and their political leanings. However, both West Virginia and Kentucky, like Maryland and Delaware, had been slave states and Jim Crow states, but had not seceded and joined the Confederacy.
So, the only "true" Southern state that I had been to was Virginia, and really, I had only been to the suburbs of Washington, D.C.
That's about four hours drive away from me driving, which means that I had not yet ventured further south than that in all of these years, while taking many, many trips further north, to New England and Canada, and even West, to the Midwest.
Decades had passed, and yet I had never made further south than Virginia (at least on the East Coast, although technically, San Francisco, which I have been fortunate enough to visit, may be the furthest South that I had technically been to).
It was time to change that.
The thing is, it was not for lack of interest. I have long wanted to visit New Orleans ("The Big Easy"), and wanted to go down to Florida, since I'm about the only person that I know who has not yet been down there (still, as I write this). I have wanted to visit the Great Smoky Mountains, wanted to visit Savannah, and wanted to travel through the Carolinas. Just had not done so yet, was all.
Well, much of that changed last week. No, I did not get all the way to Florida or Louisiana, and those will have to wait. But I finally did take a trip, with my son and my girlfriend, down South. None of us had been to the part of the South that we visited, although both of them had taken previous trips to "the South". My eight year old son already had more trips to the South than me, since he has been to Texas (with my ex-wife, for a family affair), and my girlfriend has also been to Texas, as well as to North Carolina to visit family.
But my girlfriend had wanted to visit Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and we decided to commit to making the trip there. it was supposed to be with another couple and their kids, and it was supposed to be in August, or possibly late July.
Instead, it wound up just being us, and she got nervous about both the heat and the hurricane season, so the trip was moved up to late June. It was still plenty hot and, given the weather recently, we now know we missed the first tropical storm by just days, as Tropical Storm Arthur is currently over South Carolina!.
But, no matter. We finally went down, and it was exciting to see some new things!
One thing that some people were recommending to me was not to take I-95 down, opting for I-13 and the Chesapeake Bay Bridge instead. That way, i was told, you avoid the traffic of Baltimore and especially DC. That sounded good, and indeed, that was ultimately what we did. My impressions beforehand were that it would be nice, and more scenic, but I had no idea that it would take us nearly as far as it did! When I heard "Chesapeake Bay", I assumed it was somewhere in Maryland, which would mean many more hours of driving to get to southern Virginia.
About that, thankfully, i was wrong. It took us through Delaware, which usually is a quick drive through on I-95. We saw much more of Delaware than I had ever seen before, with many farms and rural areas. We finally got to Maryland, and by then, I was beginning to worry, still thinking of the I-95 geography, and assuming there would be a lot of ground to cover in Maryland just to get to Virginia.
Before we knew it, however, we reached Virginia. There was a souvenir shop off the side of the road (that we did not go to) with a huge Confederate flag on it, and many smaller ones all over the place. And when I looked at the map, we were much further South than I had expected to be. According to the GPS, we had two hours worth of driving yet to go to reach Virginia Beach, although that still seemed to me like it should be a lot farther away.
Indeed, though, we reached Virginia Beach around two hours later, right after crossing the very long Chesapeake Bay Bridge. It was beautiful to drive over such a long expanse of water, and it's always a bit disconcerting to drive over water like that for so long. I have only been on one bridge before that was comparably long, and that would be the bridge connecting New Brunswick to Prince Edward island, up in Canada, when my then wife and I had taken a trip through the Maritime provinces.
So, there we were, at Virginia Beach! And I wanted to explore, so we went looking for the downtown. We could see the beach itself from the bridge, and so I drove along the beach, hoping to find a good spot.
The thing is, Virginia Beach is a nightmare in terms of parking. Everywhere we went, there were signs that threatened any would be parkers, claiming 24-hour surveillance, and towing at the owner's expense. One street after another. We did get out of the car for a little while, and got to see a bit of the sunset at Virginia Beach. However, we had the dog with us, and could not go too long anyway from the vehicle, since technically, we were probably parked illegally (it's hard not to be in Virginia Beach, at least that part of it).
So, this was a very brief visit to the beach, and I snapped some pictures of a lovely sunset, as well as of my girlfriend and my son (see below). Also, as we headed back to the car, I noticed some actual palm trees outside of a massive, modern hotel. Since I had only been to one place before warm enough to have palm trees (that being San Francisco), this was a big deal to me, although it seemed surprising that there would be actual palm trees anywhere in Virginia, which I always assumed received it's fair share of cold weather!
We spent that first night at a hotel, and even though we had not gone swimming at the beach, my son and I took advantage of the indoor swimming pool, which was officially open until 10pm (and unofficially, it was open until a lot later than that!).
Still, we had to settle in for the night, because it was still going to be a long day of driving the next day. Time to get some sleep, and rest up for the duration of the trip!
This was the Jeep that we used for the trip. It was a rental, and a brand new car at that, with only 213 miles on it. It was spotlessly clean, and had that wonderful, new car smell. When I gave it back to them, after a week of driving around with surprisingly tons of luggage and a child in the back, it was approaching 2,200 miles, and had largely lost that new car smell!
My girlfriend and my son at Virginia Beach. He wanted to explore the beach and go swimming, but we were illegally parked. We did not stay here for long, only watching the sunset a little. My son looks happy to be here, but my girlfriend? Not so much!
No comments:
Post a Comment