No direction home ... a complete unknown ... like a rolling luggager: 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