Today was our day to leave Appomattox and head for First Landing State Park in Virginia Beach. We called yesterday just to verify that they were open and no access problems from Hurricane Irene. They told us to come on.
We decided to take US 460 through Petersburg rather than the interstate route through Richmond. The route wasn't much shorter, but we figured we'd get to see more along the way. We did see some small towns, but a good bit of the route US 460 is a divided highway and runs through trees, so there wasn't a lot of variety, except towards the end while we were in the urban area, but we were too busy navigating to take in much of the sights. We did get to go through the Midtown Tunnel, which was closed in anticipation of possible flooding as Irene approached.
The one sight we did see was lots of trees down along the highway. Crews were busy clearing them. In one place we saw utility poles and lines down. Actually, the damage wasn't as bad as we expected it might be.
The trip was relatively fast. We got up a bit earlier than usual and managed to get out of the campground and on the road by 9:15 a.m. Google Maps told us to expect a four-hour trip. Since we stop every hour to walk around and switch drivers and we stop to eat lunch, we figured the trip would run closer to six hours.
We pulled into the campground at 1:45 P.M. Good thing we got here early. The roads through the campground are narrow and bordered by deep loose sand. Backing into our campsite took much longer than usual, but we finally made it. Then we picked all the sand burrs off our shoes and socks.
This evening we went to a couple of programs. The first was described as a Sunset Beach Stroll. We turned out to be the only attendees. The presenters were volunteers, husband and wife team Tom and Melodie. He brought a basket of shells and stuff that could be found on the beach and talked about each item. Then we walked to the boardwalk, where we had a great view of the sunset across the bay. Tom told us that the park used to be called just Seashore State Park, but the name was changed in 1997 to First Landing State Park to highlight the history. It was here that the Virginia Company first came ashore before going on to found the colony at Jamestown.
We walked along the beach to look for ghost crabs and see what we could find. We saw only one small ghost crab skittering along the sand. Melodie stayed on the boardwalk and reported that she had watched a pod of dolphins feeding, but we were too busy looking down to see them.
Afterwards Tom set up their telescope at the amphitheater. A few more folks joined us for a talk about the night sky over the Chesapeake. We got to watch the International Space Station transit across the sky.
We got home around 9:00 p.m. and had our peach crisp. It's been a good day.
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