Woke up at Tall Pines Harbor Campground. Seeing it for the first time in daylight, it's a very impressive facility. Tremendous views of the Chesapeake Bay. Very well developed grounds and buildings. Really top-notch, I'd stay there again. Clean, heated bathrooms and showers with lots of hot water. Very nice staff. Excellent experience.
Departing on a series of county roads, mostly a lane and one-half wide. It was very quiet, very pretty. At a few different times in the day, a few dogs tried to earn their dog chow by taking notion of me and doing dog-type things, but none of them were too earnest about it.
Saw a flight of four E2C Hawkeyes flying over (and then flying around), and then later saw some C2 Greyhounds. (Aviation geek detour: check out the development of the S2 Tracker, the E1 Tracer, and the C1 Trader, sort of an homage to the Grumman Ironworks.) I learned later that the NASA Wallops runway has recently been approved for FCLP work, after NALF Fentress was rendered unusable by encroaching real estate development.
I found myself dog-legging and tacking and eventually entered the town of Onancock, Va which was an occasion of great amusement for me. (You may recall that in Genesis, Onan was smote because he spilled his seed upon the ground.) When I saw this sign, I so wished I had a packet of sunflower seeds so I could take a photo of spilling them out on the ground.
Stopped the the Bank Coffee Shop. Very impressive layout, art studio in the vault, second level seating area, impressive menu. Had a turkey-bacon-cheese panini and she-crab soup. A bit expensive, spent $18 on lunch.
Having tired of the dog-legging, departed the preferred path and rode to Route 13. When I turned south I caught a bit of a tailwind because the groundspeed certainly increased.
I tried to keep going south without stopping in hopes of making as many miles as I could before sunset.
On the other hand, one of the good old boys told me he'd seen my DesignShine tail light out on the highway and thought it was real impressive, so there's that.
I had made arrangements with the very nice folks at the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel (CBBT) for a vehicle shuttle across the CBBT. I had told them I'd be there between 1800 and 1815, and I arrived at 1805 (I was kind of pleased about that). They really do a nice job if it, they bring around a pickup truck and put your bike and gear in the back and give you a lift across to the other side; you pay the same toll as a vehicle would pay. They also provide a driver service for people who are nervous about driving their own vehicles across the CBBT. I can't say enough about how smooth and welcome an accomodation this was.
On the Virginia Beach side, I rode Route13 south to Route 60 west. There was no usable shoulder, but the drivers were very nice about sharing the road. I made it to my friend D's house in about a half-hour, and then we went out to the Surf Rider restaurant at Vining's Landing for dinner. Hush puppies, shrimp, and crab cakes; living the dream.
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