Virginia and The Carolinas

We arrived in Virginia Beach on November 1 and camped at First Landing State Park near where the Jamestown settlers first landed in North America before moving up the river to Jamestown. Virginia Beach is part of a big metro area but the park itself was rather secluded. We did a lot of sightseeing while we were here. We visited the old Ft Henry Lighthouse and climbed to the top. We also saw the new Ft Henry Lighthouse, but it is not open to the public.

That afternoon, we went to the very nice Norfolk Botanical Garden and walked all over the garden seeing lots of camellias, a few azaleas blooming and lots of different kinds of gardens, both formal and natural. We really enjoyed our visit there. 

 

On our second day there we went to The Military Aviation Museum in the morning where their collection includes airplanes from WW I and WW II. They were in very nice condition and all of them are flyable.

Fokker Triwing (Think Red Baron)

Curtis Jenny JN4 (My grandfather flew these planes)

And of course the P-51 Mustang!

In the afternoon, we went to Norfolk and took a two hour boat tour of the Norfolk Naval Base. It was very interesting seeing all the huge ships and submarines including an aircraft  carrier. We also saw huge container ship facilities. It was all very impressive!

Container Ships Facility

Amphibious Attack Support Ship

Aircraft Carrier HW Bush

Moving South, we camped at Jordan Lake State Recreation area near Pittsboro, N.C.  for three nights and visited with our friends Laurie and Saunders. We walked around the beautiful Duke Gardens in Durham and drove around the area. We lived in the area until 1994 and it is unbelievable how much it  has grown. We also played several hands of euchre and ate very well!

We left N.C. and continued southward to South Carolina and spent a week camping at Huntington Beach State Park just south of Myrtle Beach  S.C. We have camped there before and really like the park. This time we were lucky to have my sister Ginger and her husband Chuck camp a couple of sites down from us for 3 nights. It was great visiting with them. We did lots of hikes around our park and at Myrtle Beach State Park and saw lots of birds, alligators, turtles and a rather large rat snake. We had lovely weather in the mid 70’s when we were there, one day of rain and then a cool down to the 60’s. We also enjoyed riding our bikes while we were there.

We visited Brookgreen Gardens, right  across the road from the state   park. It is the largest and most comprehensive collection of American sculpture in the country, a beautiful botanical garden and has a low country zoo and explains the history of the low country plantation life. Before the Civil War, this was one of the richest areas in the United State because of the production of rice which would not have been possible without slave labor. Clearing the land and then raising rice was very labor intensive and we learned all about it on a boat ride and two tram tours we took.

River otter

Plantation Cemetary

Red Wolf

Chimney from a plantation rice mill

The sculptures spread across the gardens are magnificent as are the gardens and huge live oaks all around the garden. Luckily your entrance ticket is good for seven days, so we were able to go many times.

On the way south, we made an unexpected stop at Hampton Plantation State Historic Site. We had hoped to see a Cockaded Woodpecker and did not, but we found a lovely mostly intact plantation home and even got to tour the inside.

George Washington visited the Plantation and commented about this tree

Hampton Plantation House

Our last four nights in South Carolina were spent at Edisto Beach State Park on Edisto Island south of Charleston. We camped there 2 times in the past and really liked this quiet island (at least off season) and we really like walking on the beach, and biking the trails. We toured the Botany Bay Plantation Wildlife Management area and saw the ruins of 2 plantations and Boneyard Beach, which is a beach that has been inundated by salt water which makes the trees all look like skeletons. While we were at the park, we also went to 2 programs at the environmental learning center. One was on turtles and one was about freshwater wetlands. It was a good stay.

Bone Yard Beach

Bike Trail at High Tide

One cannot take shells off Bone Yard beach so they show them on tree branches

Bone Yard Beach

We keep moving south and more on that later!

Mid Atlantic States

 November 6, 2023

We left Rhode Island on Oct 20 and drove west across Connecticut into New York and then to Pennsylvania. We drove along the Delaware River in the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area which is in Pennsylvania and New Jersey on either side of the river. We crossed the river into New Jersey and camped at Worthington State Forest which is right next to the recreation area. The fall colors were very beautiful, but this is quite a remote area for being so close to so many centers of population. The roads on the New Jersey side were some of the worst we have seen and it was quite chilly. We explored the N.J. side visiting the Millbrook Historic area most of which was reconstructed to look like an 1870’s village. We also took a nice walk on a trail along the river.

Millbrook Historic Area

Millbrook Historic Area

Millbrook Historic Area

Millbrook Historic Area

Delaware River

Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area

Our next stop was in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. We stayed at a lovely campground on a hillside overlooking beautiful farmland about 25 minutes east of Lancaster.

Many of the farms are owned by Amish and Mennonite families and, as we drove around, we saw many horse drawn buggies and farm machinery. The farms also had clothes lines attached high up on an out building or barn with pullies and the other end attached to their house so that the laundry would be way high up in the air. 

There are about 27 covered bridges in Lancaster County and the county has covered bridge routes which we drove around and saw 16 of them.  Many of them looked similar, but it was so nice driving around the beautiful countryside.

We also took a ride on the Strasburg Railroad. It was a very nice 45 minute ride pulled by a steam locomotive. We also went to the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania. This museum had very nice displays of trains from very early steam locomotives to Conrail engines and lots of freight cars also. Mark says he doesn’t know when he has seen so many rail cars in such good conditions.

Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania GG1

Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania

Train Ride Strasburg Railroad

Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania

Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania

Another interesting thing we did was have dinner at The Shady Maple Smorgasbord. This is a huge all you can eat smorgasbord and the night we went was seafood night. I don’t think that I have ever seen so many scallops and clams in one place in all my life. There was also mussels, crab cakes, salmon, steak and much more. The buffet tables went on forever!

After Lancaster, we drove to Wilmington, Delaware to visit the Winterthur Museum and Gardens. This house and grounds was lived in by three generations of the du Pont family. The property is now down to 1,000 acres and is managed as a beautiful natural garden with different bulbs planted which bloom many seasons of the year. It also has very tall trees. We took a tram tour of the gardens and also walked some of the 25 miles of trails. It is a very lovely place.

Each generation added on to the house with the final generation of Henry Francis du Pont expanding it to 175 rooms on 9 stories with the idea of it housing his extensive collection of Americana. When he turned it into a museum in 1951 he and his wife moved to a smaller 50 room home on the estate. We toured two of the nine stories and they were beautifully decorated. We also toured the Gallery which also had beautiful furniture on display.  

We spent the night at another Harvest Host in Claymont Delaware just north of Wilmington. We stayed at Hangman Brewing Company which turns out to be the smallest craft brewery in Delaware and is located in the back of a shopping center so we had a hard time finding it. The owner just had us park in the parking lot and it turned out they had good beer, a nice dog named Brew and there was a good pizza joint around the corner.

The next 2 nights we camped at Elk Neck State park in Maryland, not too far from Wilmington. It is on a peninsula with the Chesapeake Bay on one side and the Elk River on the other side. We took a nice hike to see the Turkey Point Lighthouse. On Saturday, we drove back into Wilmington to take Autumn Leaf Special on the Wilmington and Western Railroad. This was a very nice two and a half hour excursion along the Red Clay Creek and the fall colors were spectacular and we even saw two covered bridges!

Turkey Point Lighthouse

 Red Clay Creek

Autumn Leaf Special on the Wilmington and Western Railroad

Autumn Leaf Special

Our next stop was Cape Henelopen State Park in Delaware. We decided to take the scenic route along the coast. We discovered that because of the full moon the tide was particularly high and some of the marshes were flooding over the road. Because the truck and trailer are pretty high clearance, we had no trouble getting through, but  we still wonder how the large group of low slung Corvettes coming from  the opposite direction were going to fare! 

Watching the Trailer Through the High Water

Flooded Road

Cape Henelopen State Park is very, very nice. It is located on a peninsula jutting out with the Delaware  Bay on one side and the Atlantic Ocean on the other. It has many miles of very nice bike trails and we rode our bikes all over to see the sights. One very nice trail, the Gordons Pond Trail had a very long boardwalk over sand dunes and marshes and we saw many different species of birds. Add to this, the fact that it was in the lower 80’s the first two days we were here so the biking was fabulous.

Fishing Pier

Gordons Pond Trail

Gordons Pond Trail

Thanks for reading! Moving south now - more next time.