Coastal Virginia

On 9/11 we drove about 170 miles to our next stop in Virginia Beach, VA. Our route took us south on the peninsula from Delaware, through Maryland, into Virginia.

And then we took the Chesapeake Bay Bridge onto mainland Virginia. This bridge is 17.6 miles long with two mile-long tunnels in the middle. The bridge itself was not a big deal. As you can see it is two lanes going each way. And it wasn’t very high up off the water, so I wasn’t all nervous about that part of it.


The real FUN part were the tunnels. The four lanes of divided bridges came together into two lanes of very narrow tunnel. This photo was taken shortly before going into the second tunnel.


I must say these were the longest single mile sections of road I think we’ve ever traveled. Even going at about 35 mph, it felt like we were careening out of control - with cars coming directly at us! There was a walkway with a railing on the passenger side and I just knew we would lose the mirror on that side of the coach. But in the end, all was well. I’m sure if we’d been in a car it would have been no big deal, but we weren’t and it was.

Then we drove through miles of Virginia Beach city streets. That part of the state seems to be highly populated. But in time we reached our campground, which was very nice. This was the view to the rear of the coach.


We went to the beach at Virginia Beach which had a boardwalk. Only it was cement, not boards, and it was almost all hotels, not fun little shops like we’d enjoyed in Rehoboth Beach. But we did find a great place to eat. (Don’t we always?) And I had the best crab cakes on earth, I think.

There was a great beach there, too. It was very broad and we did walk it some.


Another day we drove to Sandbridge Beach, a little hole-in-the-wall town just a couple miles up the road from where we were staying. We walked a couple miles on the beach.


We checked out the fishing pier. We drove around the town and then headed back to the coach for a fairly lazy afternoon.

We had booked a “party boat” fishing trip for Thursday, but the weather turned bad and we decided not to go out in the wind and rain. We started to go to the Farmers Market, but Julian’s glasses broke and we headed out instead to find a place to get them fixed. Once that was accomplished, we headed back to the beach area and found another place to have another really good meal.

Our week there went really fast. Even though I don’t have many pictures to share, we did have a great time and enjoyed the area very much.