Virginia Beach

It was a lovely sunny day when we left Cape Hatteras to continue our journey home. In just as few short hours we arrived at our new home for the next week at Virginia Beach. The reason there hasn't been a new blog till now; this campground doesn't have internet access. Some are great, some pretty poor but this one doesn't even have a place to plug into an internet access, so this blog is late in coming, sorry.

Although the day we arrived was beautiful, by supper time, the clouds had rolled in and we had a huge downpour with thunder and sheets of wind drive rain. Sure glad we're not tenting! We needed to go into town the next day; this is what the road outside the campground looked like. I figured, as long as I can see the road stripes under water it can't be too deep. These roads are low to the ground and obviously flood often.

The reason we had to go in to town so badly? Grammie broke the handle off the kitchen taps so we had no water until I put in new ones. I think Grammie just wanted more modern taps, we certainly couldn't find anything like what was there.

Once the weather cleared and the new taps were in, we went exploring. This is Virginia beach, which is way wider than any beach we've seen. Yet, apparently, during the summer you can hardly make your way to the water because of number of people enjoying the beach. There are some benefits to coming out of season. There were surfers out there but they all had full body suits with even their heads and hands covered. One surfer we talked to said the water was around 50F and even with the body suit he was cold.

Near Virginia Beach is Norfolk Naval Station, the largest naval base in the world. Over 30,000 people live and work there as sailors, pilots, and marines. We decided to take a boat tour of the base because thats the only way you can even get close to the big ships. This is the George H.W. Bush, the newest nuclear powered aircraft carrier in the American fleet. It is still going through sea trials and isn't ready for duty yet.

The day we took our tour, their latest nuclear powered hunter/killer sub was commissioned. There was a big reception; you can still see the bunting on the sub. 2 days later it left for duty but they wouldn't tell us where.

The naval station was about 15 miles from the dock where the tour started and although it was sunny, the wind was very cold. We darned near froze taking the boat to and from the naval base. Now that we're warm again, it was a great boat tour.

Where the tour started, the navy has a museum and you can go on the battleship Wisconsin which was the largest battleship ever built. It fought in WWII, Korea, Viet Nam and the Gulf War. It has been decommissioned but can be reactivated if needed. It looks like the one I blogged about before so I won't bore you again. This is a display in the museum showing the size of the large guns on the battleship. I tried to get grammie to crawl through but no dice.

There was a lot to see in this area, especially history. Portsmouth is where the navy museum was and has historic areas of town dating back to the first settlers. The bay is one of the largest in the world and container ships are constantly coming and going. I managed to find another plane museum. This is an actual WW1 German Fokker (hey, I said FOKKER) which was the scourge of the skies when it came out. There were about 30 planes in this museum and all of them are flyable. I've never seen many of these and the fact that they are flown is amazing. Its a private collection; they wouldn't say who though. I'm guessing, that with these rare planes and the hangers, he probably has $100 million or more tied up. Best private collection of anything I've ever seen.

We did manage to find time to relax and have our happy hour once in a while. This was a lovely campground and we hate to leave, but further adventures await.