Pandemic Diaries - Year 2, Weeks #11 & #12

31 May 2021 

After travelling back to New Jersey, we repacked once again, reloaded the car, and headed to Pennsylvania.  We had two fun family events that were postponed from last fall - a Bar Mitzvah for one great nephew, and a Bat Mitzvah for a great niece.  The two young people did very well with all their studies and were able to read the Torah beautifully.  Each event had a smaller-than-usual party, since the planning had to be begin a few months prior and also had to follow the Covid protocols from that time.  Actually, it worked out well having a small party with fewer guests, because it gave everyone more time for more conversation with people.  We both really enjoyed this family time - as well as being able to hug other people for a change!

And then, because this is a Phebe and Richard trip, we took the days between the two events to do something we've always talked about doing.  We both agreed that our retirement is the time to do all those things we've always wanted to do - so we spent four days in Hershey, Pennsylvania, home to the Hershey Chocolate company!

We didn't want to do the more touristy things like go to the amusement park or the zoo, we just wanted to visit the factory and see the street lights shaped like chocolate kisses.  

I had hoped that the air would smell like chocolate, the way some small towns in Europe do.  But apparently the Environmental Protection Agency forced Hershey to control the emissions, so the town no longer smells like chocolate.  Of course, I would never think of chocolate fumes as being air pollution, but what do I know?

 

Hershey Chocolate Company no longer allows tours through the actual factory, the way they did originally.  I'm not sure if there were health concerns or if there were too many people like Richard who want to swim in the vats of chocolate.   The compromise is a free tour through a simulated chocolate factory, possibly using the old equipment.  So we did that.

Milton Hershey started Hershey's Chocolates in 1893 - over 100 years of chocolate!!!  Yum!  One wall had a huge mural featuring the founder, as well as a few quotations by him.  After all, he was the founder of what has become a huge empire - an empire larger than Milton ever envisioned!

 

The tour begins with people getting into little three-car trains that are attached to cogs on sort of a giant conveyor belt, for lack of a better explanation.  The cars are each colored for signature candies: one silver for kisses, one orange for Reese's, and one deep brown for basic Hershey bars.  Makes for a colorful ride!

People get into these cars when each mini train arrives at a giant rotating circle.  Yeah, not so great for those of us without the balance of a gymnast or the grace of a dancer.  We both had assistance both getting onto that circle and then getting into the car.  There's something about hopping from a stationary surface to a moving surface that gets me every time.

We rode past various displays while a disembodied voice explained what we were seeing - roasting chocolate beans, breaking them into nibs, grinding them into paste, mixing in milk, and so on.  There were small rivers of chocolate that weren't deep enough for swimming, and tubes that mimicked chocolate pouring down to be formed into various candies.  It really was pretty amazing to see the entire process, including the wrapping and packaging.

At the end, we both had assistance getting out of the car and back onto unmoving land - and, the best part, we were each given two mini Hershey's bars of chocolate.  Milk chocolate, the standard - ah well, still tasty, though not as good as the special dark that I prefer.

The rest of the Hershey Chocolate World was rather commercial, with a variety of souvenirs featuring various Hershey products.  Yup, tee shirts, sweatshirts, bags, mugs, pillows, stickers, pins, magnets, on and on.  We bought nothing, but we did look.

We drove around a bit, along Chocolate Avenue, Cocoa Avenue, and ate at the Cocoa Diner.  It all was very kitschy, but we both kind of enjoyed the silliness of the whole thing.

It was a nice little break, and we both had a good time.  Even without swimming in molten chocolate.

Pandemic Diaries Year 2 Week #9 and #10

22 May 2021

 

I know, it's been several weeks since I last blogged.  It's been busy, what can I say.

 

We left our colorful house on Anastasia Island on May 5, heading north.  We both were sad to leave roomy house, and I was sad to leave my refuge at the dock, as well as all the bird friends I made during our six months there.

But we needed to head back to New Jersey and then on to Pennsylvania for the long-awaited Bar and Bat Mitzvahs that had been postponed from last fall.  Yay for vaccinations and things opening up!

Nothing major or newsworthy happened on our trip north, fortunately.  We had an interesting route, however, and I though people might like to know about the alternatives to Interstate 95.

We did the normal I-95 route from St. Augustine to St. George, South Carolina, on Day 1 (detailed maps of our route each day are at the end).

Day 2, we continued north on I-95 but a bit south of Manning, North Carolina, we headed east so we could continue on Highway 17, a more rural route.  We spent the night in Jacksonville, NC.  Again, nothing especially exciting.  The Myrtle Beach area was busy and crowded, so we opted to avoid the beach and people.

 

On Day 3, we went through rural North Carolina and Virginia, continuing on to spend the night near Virginia Beach.  This was setting us up for the excitement on Day 4.

 

Our plan for Day 4 was to take the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Tunnel at sunrise.  I had never heard of this bridge, so here's their website if you'd like more information:  http://www.cbbt.com/ 

 

Basically, this is a bridge and tunnel network at the mouth of Chesapeake Bay, a total of 23 miles long.  So in the middle of the bridge, you really don't see land in any direction.  At all.  It's a bit intimidating, and some people have billed this as the scariest bridge in the US.  Richard and I thought it would be fun to go over the bridge at sunrise, for the great views and color.

 

The bridge begins over the water for a few miles.  There are actually two bridges, one with two lanes going north, the other with two lanes going south.  But then, for the tunnels, each bridge merges with the other and reduces to one lane, so that the tunnel is one lane of traffic in each direction and we drive down into the tunnel.  A couple of miles of tunnel, and then we emerge from underwater and the lanes diverge into two bridges again.

 

And then these two bridges continue for several more miles, eventually coming back together for a second tunnel.  Another emergence, and then we can actually see land in the distance where the final bridge span arrives on the DelMarVa peninsula - a little bit of eastern Virginia, then Maryland, and then rural Delaware.  All on Highway 17.

 

The bridge actually turned out to be way shorter and much less scary than either of us thought it would be.  Seriously, it was rather a thrill, and over way sooner than we expected.  Somehow I thought there would be more than two tunnels, so that we never did park on the island where the tunnel goes in or comes out - so we didn't really see what it's like to be in the middle of the ocean on the bridge.

 

But we did see some birds flying over head, and the sunrise was pretty though not dramatic.

 

And we parked at the northern end so we could look back and get some photos of the bridge.  The bridge is so far away, I have to make the photos extra large so you can see the bridge on the water.

 

We spent the night of Day 4 in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.  Because again, we had a plan for a different kind of trip to go from Delaware to New Jersey.

There's a ferry that travels from Lewes, Delaware, to Cape May, New Jersey.  And Cape May is about 30 minutes south of Richard's brother in south NJ.  Made perfect sense to take the ferry instead of driving the long way around Delaware Bay.

Of course, our ferry day turned out to be grey and windy, so there were some good sized white caps as we sailed across.  But our car was at the front of the ferry, so we had a great view of the water.  We were allowed to stand in front of the car, but once the wind picked up and the waves got a bit larger, well, we both opted to sit in the car.  It's hard to stand up on a bouncing ferry!

We arrived in the afternoon, and made our way back to spend short week with S and J, Richard's brother and his wife.  Mostly we went through the items we left there, and mailed some boxes back to my brothers in Washington state.  We also made plans for the following two weeks spent in Pennsylvania - but that's another blog.

 

It definitely was an interesting way to travelling, with the bridge and the ferry providing some more scenic routes than the interstate!

So, here are the maps of our route:

Overview - St. Augustine, Florida to Linwood, New Jersey

Day 1 - St. Augustine to St. George, South Carolina

Day 2 - St. George, SC to Jacksonville, North Carolina

 

 

  

Day 3 - Jacksonville, North Carolina to Virginia Beach, Virginia

Day 4 - Virginia Beach, Virginia, to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware - bridge and highway

 

Day 5 - Rehoboth Beach/Lewes, Delaware, to Linwood, New Jersey - ferry and highway

Pandemic Diaries Year 2 Week #6 through #8

 22 April 2021 to 5 May 2021

The end of April and beginning of May was rather consumed with sorting our stuff, repacking, and planning our trip back northward.  Boring stuff but essential.  However, absolutely not worth blogging about, so I haven't written in a while.  Because, obviously, I was busy with all that sorting and packing, and then cleaning our adorable little winter house before we vacated it.

 

But I had some wonderful bird encounters that are worth noting.  I know, I sound like a rabid birder these days.  I'm not, really.  It's just that this location was so wonderful for bird watching, and there wasn't a whole lot else going on during our winter in St. Augustine.  

 

Our dock and creek seem to have some resident birds, including several large white egrets, a young and very blue great blue heron, and an older (and greyer) great blue heron.  I've seen the same birds during several afternoons at the dock, and they've become less reticent to walk around when I'm down there.

 

Often, I hear some kind of heron-like bird, with that distinctive croaking squawk, and then replying cries echoing across the marsh.  But I never manage to see what bird makes this cry.  I finally met it!  This is a bittern, a kind of heron.  (In my mind, I called it a little brown heron to remember what I needed to research.  Herons are great that way - they're mostly named by size and color!  SO easy!)  Anyway, the little brown heron really is a bitten, and they live among the marsh grasses.  Periodically they dart down to the water's edge and splash around in the water, which is when I saw this bittern washing in the creek, having a great time.  It was fascinating to watch.

 

After all the ducking and splashing, the bittern slunk back into the grasses, where it spread and fluffed its feathers, preening in a little sunny patch.  So the bittern thought it was hidden, but it actually was right near the walkway.  Really pretty chestnut colored feathers!

 

I was glad to finally see what had been making all that noise!

 

There also was a wood stork one day, standing by the run-off collection pond on our road.  Huge white stork with black edges, standing silently, ignoring the small heron (maybe a green heron?) sneaking past on the edge of the pond.

 

 

And then, suddenly we started seeing roseate spoonbills nearby!  On another afternoon, I could see a few pink birds on the far side of the island right in front of our dock.  I kept mentally telling the birds to head a little south and then come up around the creek so we could see them from our dock.  And eventually they appeared!!!  SO gorgeous!!!!  I could see them at the end of the curve, and one spoonbill started walking toward the dock, getting closer and close!  Absolutely thrilling!!!

In the photos, you can see how their bill is flat and somewhat spoon-shaped, and sort of a greenish grey color.  The birds slightly open their bill, stick their face in the water, and slowly walk along, swinging their heads from side to side in an arc.  They seem to either filter out whatever they catch, or stir up the sediment and then catch the shrimp that way.  But the shrimp which makes up most of their diet is also what gives the spoonbills their beautiful pink color.  You can see how the heads and necks are white, but the back, wings, and tail are a wonderful rosy pink.  That pink, and the red splotch, come from the shrimp coloring.  Flamingos are pink for the same reason, although they're a very different kind of more coral pink.

Anyway, I watched the spoonbills for about an hour.  One in particular, the spoonbill who came past the dock, paraded back and forth in front of our dock, looking like some long-legged model in pink strutting up and down the runway!  Seriously, these birds have attitude!!!  They really are wonderful birds, and didn't seem to mind being photographed.  I went back a few days later, and another spoonbill came by.  There were several flying overhead as I walked home, and we even saw a matched pair flying around when we went to have brunch with visiting cousins.  I guess late April is a great time to view roseate spoonbills around St. Augustine and Anastasia Island!

Okay, I'll add in lots of photos of these amazing birds - how can you not love that there really is something in the world as incredible as rosy pink birds????  So yes, once again, lots of photos!

And in a day or two (or three), I'll catch up with our drive north, and where we are right now.  Or then.  Or something like that.