Virginia Beach and 24 hours of rain!

 After our marathon day of soaking in American history in the "Historical Triangle," we needed to sleep late the next morning. Then we hit the road to our next camping destination at First Landing State Park. This fits in well with our history lessons from yesterday. This Virginia state park was built on the spot where the three English ships first landed. A small museum has displays, including Captain John Smith meeting the area's Native Americans. As we know, the three ships with their 100 English men would continue up the James River to start a settlement at Jamestown. But today, the Engelman motor home was headed to that first landing on the Atlantic coast near Virginia Beach at First Landing State Park.

Our drive was south into the Norfolk area of Virginia. We discovered two things about this drive. First, we would find lots of construction, as they are building a new tunnel.

Second, we would find that we had to cross a bridge or tunnel to get to that area. Some of the options require a toll, but our route did not. Mark has driven over many bridges, and through some tunnels through mountains. But today, Mark is driving the motor home through its first tunnel that goes under the water.

The lighting in the Hampton Road Tunnel was a little strange as we drove through this 3.5-mile tunnel where the James River and Chesapeake Bay meet.

Check-in time at First Landing State Park was 1:00, and that's when we arrived. We could only get one night's reservation at this very popular beach-side state park, so we have to make use of every minute available to us. We have to say that the signage is poor, the check-in process was disorganized, and the traffic inside the state park was crazy. But Mark finally got the motor home through the mayhem, and was heading towards our campsite in the sand under a canopy of trees.

Several years ago, a traveler from the east coast mentioned to Denisa that his favorite beach on this side of the country was Virginia Beach. She filed that information away, and so she has been looking forward to seeing Virginia Beach ever since. But she forgot to file away a sunny weather reservation for this short trip to this favorite beach. The forecast was for rainy weather during our entire 24-hour stay. But that didn't keep us from trying to enjoy the beach. We drove to downtown Virginia Beach to get our feet in the sand. Because we were between rain storms, we had the beach to ourselves. We were disappointed to see that this section of the Atlantic Ocean doesn't seem to be bringing any sea shells to the beach.

It would rain a little and we would run for cover, then come out to walk more of the boardwalk. The iconic figure on the beach is King Neptune, who was having a hard time controlling the sea this afternoon.

We also found fun fish and other nice beach statues. Normally we would have had to work hard to get a picture without the crowds. But today we had it to ourselves.

While all the vacationers had ran for cover, this is still a work-day for the military. We enjoyed the fly-overs from jets in formation from the Norfolk Naval Base. They were so fast! By the time you could hear them, they were almost out of sight.

So we have now visited the famous boardwalk and beach at Virginia Beach, but we know that this day was not representative of the usual crowds that flock here.

The rain and wind continued through the night. When we got out the next morning, we saw that flowers were strewn over our camp site and steps. It looks like we were parked under an orange trumpet vine that lost its blooms in the heavy rain.

The forecast for this second day had more rain in it. But we are sturdy travelers, and by golly we are going to see the beach here at the state park too. So we crossed the wet walk-way to see the sand for ourselves.

It was a good walk to the beach, where we saw a huge cargo ship making its way to port. 

We also watched as an osprey dipped into the ocean and came out with a fish. We'll count this big long stretch of sandy beach as another of God's wonders. This is our first of many ocean walks this summer.

We had read about the bike paths in First Landing State Park, so we got a break in the weather this morning that allowed for us to take a ride. The trail was a little muddy, and we kept our rain coats close by, but we got to experience the bike paths before we had to check out at noon.

It was a crazy--and wet!--24-hour stay at First Landing State Park. It was a lesson that even though you manage to get a neat camp site in a beautiful place, you might not get to enjoy the blue-sky weather you see on the post cards. But we did get to experience Virginia Beach--in spite of the rain.