History Lesson

Chesapeake Bay separates Maryland from Virginia along the coast. Rather than taking a ferry like we did across the Delaware Bay, we were able to use the Bridge / Tunnel route this time. The same 30 km distance was covered in 20 minutes, shaving more than an hour off our previous ferry ride. It is an engineering marvel, completed in 1964. It is primarily a highway built on concrete trestles and also includes 2 different one mile tunnels that facilitate a passage way for large ships to enter the bay and access ports. Tunnels through mountains seem a lot safer than a 50 year old one mile tunnel under a significant amount of water.....somehow we survived.

Once we were back on solid ground we drove straight to Williamsburg where we have spent most of the past week working on American history in the colonial era (1700's). Within historical Williamsburg (3 days) about half of our time was spent on interactive events including a fabulous "Conversation with Thomas Jefferson" conducted by an excellent actor who was very knowledgable on his TJ history and quick on his feet to deal with various questions from the audience in a town hall type meeting. The 90 minute long afternoon re-enactments.....different each day.....were also entertaining. We took a short drive down to Jamestown, the first established town in North America (by the English in 1607)......apparently the Vikings just drank and ate in Newfoundland then left??? More importantly though it is the home of Pocahantas (the one before Rhonda) so we had to check whether her life was nearly as interesting. Apparently it was.

Today, that vicious weather from the west arrived, dropping the daytime highs from 80F to 50F and rainy so we did some shopping and went to see a movie (Rum Diary) at a new theatre called the Movie Tavern. It is a very interesting concept. They have 10 theatres that each hold 100 people.......10 terraced levels with a long countertop in each row and comfy office type chairs on rollers. You can pre-order reasonably priced meals (good food) and drinks ($4 pints) and they deliver it to you while the movie is on, including a second beer 30 minutes later. They now have 15 of these in the eastern U.S. and hopefully the trend will continue into Canada.

One more day in this area and then we will be heading back to the coast to the Outer Banks in North Carolina.

Scary Campground

On Friday morning we took the ferry from Cape May, NJ to Lewes, Delaware. Everyone made it on board that wanted to for the 90 minute, 18 mile voyage. After arriving we headed inland to Easton where we had read about an Amish Market. The food was excellent....what we ate for lunch and what we consumed over the week-end.......and we wished later that we had purchased more.

Our next stop was Ocean City, Maryland, back on the coast. It is basically a long, narrow sand spit filled with hotels on both shorelines with a road down the middle containing bars and restaurants.......with 10 miles of sandy beach it looked like a real party city during the summer but it was very quiet in late October. There was no available space left for campgrounds so we took the bridge back over to the mainland and found a place not too far away called Frontier Town in Berlin. To our surprise there was a line-up of vehicles to register for sites at the campground and when we got to the front of the line there were only 10 sites left out of 600+. This was quite strange to us since everywhere we else we had stayed had been less than 25% full. As it turns out, the schools were closed on Friday so it created a long week-end for families and with good weather forecast everyone was trying to squeeze in a final camping w/e..........much like we do in Alberta........around Labour Day. What we did not know until we settled into our campsite was that the campground was also hosting Halloween activities all week-end. More than 50% of the sites were decorated, most of them much more elaborate than homes usually are at the end of October. It was quite incredible to walk around the campground viewing the sights and watching the young children enjoying themselves while touring with their parents. We quickly went back to the registration office and booked another night while it was still available. The next night we walked around again seeing even more scary scenes that we had missed the night before. It was also obvious that families had grouped together for the trip (close to Baltimore) as had many young adults since there were often 10-15 people around each campfire.

This morning we continued south along the coast into Virginia, another long, narrow piece of land seperated from the mainland by several bridges and called the Eastern Shores region. We stopped at Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge Park for a 7km hike including a walk along a small part of the 10 mile sandy beach with very few people around on a sunny day approaching 20C. The ocean water was a little cooler but I had to venture calf-high into the Atlantic to complete a coast-to-coast touchdown (we were on Vancouver Island in early spring).

We have settled into a campground by the water which is only 10% full but apparently it was totally full this morning (Sunday) as they also had Halloween activites all week-end........and we are still a week away from the real thing.........not sure what we should expect!

Size Matters

When we last signed off we were in Cape Cod. Starting out at 2 pm we took a leisurely drive along the coastal roads through many pretty villages (minimal store signage, no big retail / food chains) and beautiful properties. We were told that the Kennedy compound in Hyannis was only visible from the water so we made no attempt to locate it. Realizing that our daylight was disappearing we made a dash to arrive at Provincetown (the northern tip of the peninsula) just in time to see a lovely sunset on the beach. The town itself had nice looking shops and restaurants but the streets were very narrow, catering to walkers, and since the only parking lot wasn't eager to accept our 20' beheemoth we moved on and found a wonderful restaurant (Montano's) just outside of town.

The next day was filled with constant rainfall so we abandoned our plans for a ferry ride and bicycle tour of Martha's Vineyard, driving south and narrowly avoiding the afternoon rush hour as we bypassed New York City. We spent the night at a campground just outside of Atlantic City where we were several days too early for a Joe Walsh / BB King concert that would have been a fun time.......but Atlantic City, which is working hard to improve it's image, is still not a place that you would want to spend a lot of time walking around so we continued driving down the coast.

We drove through many beautiful seaside towns (Sea Isle City, Avalon, Stone Harbour, Wildwood), all with populations in the 1,000 - 5,000 range that swell to 25,000 - 200,000 in the summer. It was a good time to visit (unless you are a party animal). In Wildwood we saw numerous kites on the beach so we stopped and wandered over, discovering 30-40 kite buggies being propelled by the wind. We had observed kite surfing before but this was a first for us. Talking to one of the enthusiasts we found out that it was a perfect time of year for them since no one else was on the 5 km beach and they could reach speeds of 50 - 75 kmh (they wore helmets!).

After reaching Cape May, the southern tip of New Jersey, we toured the town and had a tasty seafood lunch, then drove over to the ferry terminal for the 2:30 pm trip to Delaware. We arrived 30 minutes early since several locals had advised us that it was a quiet time of year and we would have no trouble getting on. Unfortunately we ended up being the second vehicle in the standby lane........the vehicle in front of us made it on, and then the attendant advised us that we were too big but the 16' sedan behind us would still fit! It wasn't a significant problem for us since we aren't in a hurry to get anywhere at this point (unlike the other 10 vehicles behind us) so we found a fabulous seafood market and enjoyed a campsite dinner of shrimp and lobster. Life is good.

Family & Friends

We left Ontario with some more wonderful memories of visits with family and friends........3 Thanksgiving dinners and many more fabulous meals, libations and conversations. We are fortunate to have so many people that we desire to be with even though time constraints limit our time with them and others that we didn't get together with on this trip.

Heading out of Toronto on Sunday we took the opportunity to go down memory lane. Our first stop was in West Hill at our old family home (the first one owned by my parents). It has been 35 years since I lived there but nothing has changed on the exterior of the house.........other than my memories of a decent sized hockey rink beside the house (before the carport was built) were proportionately misguided. Our next stop was in Port Hope at the farmhouse that her grandparents purchased in 1914 (built in the early 1900's). That house also looks just like it did when it was sold in 1986 except that the barn, large vegetable and flower gardens, and surrounding farmland have been replaced by a new community that surrounds the existing house, the only reminder that something special was once there.

Following an overnight visit at a cottage north of Kingston with Rhonda's girlfriend Diana and Mojo, her 220 pound English mastiff (a beautiful dog) we began our journey into the U.S. We drove through the Adirondack Mountains which seemed more like small hills compared to our Rocky Mountains. The fall colours were beautiful but it was very quiet with almost all of the campgrounds closed. Since it was overcast, cool & windy we kept driving to the southern edge where we spent the night in Lake George, a destination area in the summer but seemingly in hibernation when we arrived.

With a weather forecast of 20C on the coast we decided to drive straight thru to the coast this morning and we made it to Cape Cod by the early afternoon (the navigator won that round....for those that inquired about our planned destinations). I will provide more details of our east coast adventures in the next blog........right now we are working on understanding this strange Boston dialect that the locals seem to speak.

The Mother Ship Has Landed

Our Fall 2011 tour of the U.S. East Coast is off to a successful start, landing us in Muskoka after 5 days and 3400 km's with great driving weather. The wildlife was a little sparse along the way, perhaps a good thing when you are on the highway, although we did spot two large moose very close to the Trans Canada in the middle of the prairies surrounded by wheat fields.......a very strange place to see them. In Winnipeg we had dinner with our niece Lorie, and met her fiancee, Josh, a wonderful young man. They are both working for social service agencies and troubled youths, a very stressful but rewarding career........hopefully it won't make them grow old too quickly.

We were intially disappointed with the fall colours heading into Ontario, north of Lake Superior (all yellow and green that we are too familiar with in Alberta) but by the time we got to Wawa the reds and oranges were evident and further south to Sault Ste. Marie we had the full range of colours. There are still many trees in transition so our colourful experience will continue over the next several weeks.

We are now enjoying some rest at Scott & Andree's new home on Tondern Island, not far from the old family cottage in Port Carling that holds some wonderful memories for our family. They have done a great job building it with only a few finishing touches remaining. Today we are headed to Rhonda's other brother's cottage where Jeff & Patty will be hosting our first of several Thanksgiving dinners. We are looking forward to seeing the fruits of their labour at their rapidly expanding cottage on Harris Lake and a visit with their family.