Beach Trip

Well, as I said in my lsat post, our trip to VA Beach started out pretty inauspiciously. Bob's sister Rose and her 2 girls came down Saturday afternoon for a night on their way down to Ann's house in Richmond. We had a good afternoon with them, but we didn't really figure out how Sunday was going to work before we went to bed. Because of various miscommunications and differing expectations, we ended up going to church (without Rose), but leaving early to get back here to say goodbye to her before she left. We were not at all packed up to leave, so we followed about an hour later, at 1:00. We were supposed to stop at Ann's house, but tensions were pretty high in our vehicle, so we decided just to go straight to the beach. We got to Fort Story at 5:30. We stayed at the Cape Henry Inn, in a cottage, which is the third picture on the main webpage. (There are 3 cottages attached in a row.) Our cottage was very nice--2 bedrooms, bath, full kitchen, and a nice living'dining area--all for $100 a night! It was technically right on the beach, but you couldn't just walk out to the beach from our deck. There was a wide strip of trees, scrubby bushes, etc. (which I know are very heathly for beaches, prevent errosion, etc.!), but that meant we had to hike down a ways to a long boardwalk which then finally took us to the beach. But we had a great view from our cottage, and we got to see lots of big Navy ships go by and also anchor right outside. But I am getting distracted--on with the narrative. So we unpacked and then talked about dinner. We almost decided to order pizza there in the room, but we ended up leaving to seek our mealtime fortunes off post. We had a pull-out map of VA Beach,so we figured we would find tons of restaurants. The main strip is 3 miles away from Ft. Story, so we headed over there, then picked a main road and turned on it, away from the Strip, figuring restaurants would be cheaper and not as crowded there. We drove for a while but didn't see anything, so we turned again, paralleling the Strip, then finally back towards the Strip, then finally back on the Strip itself. There were no recognizable restaurants. We looked in every little strip mall for pizza places, but all we could find were carry-out places. Everyone was so hungary by now, since it was almost 7:00. There were lots of trendy restaurants on the Strip, places I would normally avoid like the plague, but at these we could find no parking. Tensions were again quite high. Finally, at almost 8:00, we ended up eating at McDonalds, which was certainly not the hot, cheesy, pizza I was hoping for. At that point, I was firmly convinced that I hated not only beaches in general, but also any populated area surrounding beaches, as well as greedy developers who only put up condos but no normal restaurants, like Chilis or Applebees. We limped back to the room and put everyone to bed.

Monday dawned sunny and beautiful. We ate breakfast, then packed everything up for our day at the beach. The beach at Ft. Story turned out to be a wonderful place. It was not crowded at all, and only families were there--no perky college girls in teeny tiny bikinis or anything. Jonathan began his first beach visit in the same way that Luke and Caleb did when we used to visit the L's down in Florida--he absolutely hated the sand and wouldn't put his feet on it. He did condescend to sit on a towel an eventually play in it, but there was no way he was going in that water! The other boys started building a sand fort (of course). The water was nice and warm, and so eventually I moved my chair up so my feet were in the water. Finally Joanthan decided he disliked being back alone under the umbrella even more than he disliked the sand, so he managed to walk up to where we were, all of about 4 feet away. Oh, the torture! Then he discovered that the wetter sand, which was firmer and not so hot, was really not that bad at all, so he started playing there. A few waves went over his toes, and then he finally decided that wasn't so bad either, and he even let Bob take him into the water to swim! He ended up loving the beach, a much quicker transformation than either Luke or Caleb at his age! Surprisingly, I loved the beach too. I thought I would read the whole time, but I just enjoyed sitting there, watching the waves and everyone play. I even swam in the ocean! There was no nasty sea slime or jelly fish or anythng else like that to make me grossed out! LOL! I took a nice walk by myself along the beach, and I found several beautiful horseshoe crab shells. The highlight of the beach was definitely seeing dolphins. The website said that this beach has "ten times more dolphins that anywhere else on the East Coast", and I would believe them. We saw tons of dolphins--big pods of about 14 or so, as well as small groups of just 2 or 3, gracefully swimming up and down the beach. Sometimes they even came inside the buoys marking where people could swim, so they really were close! I took some pictures, but I am sure you will not be able to see a single thing, so you will just have to trust me--they were really neat! We went back for lunch around 1:00, then eveyrone rested for a little while. Jonathan, Caleb, and I stayed back, while Nathan, Luke, and Bob went back for a few more hours in the afternoon. It was low tide then, and they even caught a blue crab! They put it back since 1. we don't like crab, and 2. even if we did, there's no way I'm boiling something alive! Bleh! Everyone showered, and we tackled the dinner problem again. Vowing to learn from our mistakes, we searched through a coupon book and found a likely candidate for pizza. Armed with this address, we set out. Ironically, it was just a lot furthur down on the first road we turned on. We just panicked and turned agian too soon! We found tons of places to eat. In fact, when we got to the shopping center where the pizza restaurant was, there was an Old Country Buffet there too. We decided the pizza place looked kind of like a hole in the wall, and there was no one in there, so we ate at the buffet. Hey, you get dessert there! We had a great dinner, more than making up for McDonalds the previous night, and it turned out that Monday is "Flurry night" there. So we all except Caleb enjoyed flurries. Mine was made with chocolate ice cream and Heath bar pieces, and it was absolutely delicious. Bob claims his which had Nestle's Crunch bar with chocolate ice cream and some hot fudge sauce was better, but don't believe him. LOL! They were all good, especially since you could put a lot of whatever additive you picked in, so it wasn't like you got to the bottom and there were no Heath bar pieces left! We finally rolled ourselves out of there, back to the cottage and into bed. The boys were so exhausted, we heard nary a peep from them the whole night. We got up the next morning, and it was a gray, drizzly day. We were so thankful that the Lord gave us beautiful weather for our day at the beach! We packed up and checked out at 11:00. Then we drove off to Bob's sister Ann's house in Richmond, where a lot of his family had gathered. That is for another entry however, since this one is quite long! We are already making plans to go back down to VA Beach, since we didn't do any sightseeing. There are a lot of naval museums that looked so interesting, as well as boat tours to take you around the Norfolk harbor to see all the big Navy ships. The rates really go down at the Cape Henry Inn after Sept. 14, so maybe we'll go after that.