Goodbye Virginia. Good Riddance To Your Drivers!

Our last view of Virginia, leaving Tangier Island.

Are All Californians Celebrities?  We Are!

Hey, I'm going for 2 days in a row; a real accomplishment lately.  We are currently at Jane's Island State Park which is just outside of Crisfield Maryland.  We awoke this morning in Buzzard Point Marina in the tidewater area of the western shore.  That western shore refers to the Chesapeake Bay. The loyal followers of the blog know that of course.

We were camped right by the dock from which the ferry departs, so there wasn't much to this morning except to pack our gear and get on the boat.  That part of Virginia is really very beautiful and the view from the water did not disappoint, although it did give a much different impression than the view from the roadways.  From the roadways it was obvious that the region is very rural, agricultural and has plenty of folks living somewhere near or below the poverty line.

Virginia has 3 peninsulas that form much of the western shore of the bay.  Only one of these, I believe that it is called the James Peninsula, has much in the way of population.  With Jamestown, Yorktown and Colonial Williamsburg there is opportunity to develop tourism.  Being the closest to the mouth of the bay, it also had an advantage historically and Newport News, which had long been a major shipbuilding center if I am not mistaken, is at the end of this peninsula.  Also, Norfolk is just across the James River.  The other 2 peninsulas have always been rural, swampy, and have relied on agriculture and fishing as the major industries.  I don't know how good, or rich the soil is from a farmer's point of view, but I can say that there are not large tracts for developing.  So I am guessing that even in the best of times, these 2 peninsulas have never been extremely prosperous.  But that story isn't told very well from the water.

As the ferry pulled out this morning, the sights were nothing short of spectacular.  There were many different inlets and streams creating a maze of waterways to choose from.  And lining each of these were magnificent homes, all neatly kept, with expansive lawns reaching down to the water's edge, where almost every home had a beautiful boat.  It reminded me of a scene that one might picture in Disney's version of an antebellum Rivers of America attraction.  When we entered the bay I got a sense of just how large the Chesapeake is.  As we got farther away from the peninsula we had left, I stopped paying close attention to the views, because it seemed that there was nothing to look at but water.  I am not sure if we did in lose sight of land, but if we didn't, it would have been just a speck on the horizon.  I am fairly familiar with the San Francisco Bay and how it looks from the water.  At 60 or more miles long and about 10 miles wide, it is a pretty substantial body of water, but it is absolutely dwarfed by the Chesapeake.

Tangier Island is a page out of history, literally.  Because of its location, it has been isolated for most of its 300 or so years of habitation by European settlers.  They have a dialect of English that is apparently a throwback to old English, and linguists have devoted plenty of time studying it.  The primary industry has been and still remains fishing.  There are a couple of restaurants, gift shops and even a couple of bed and breakfasts to cater to tourists, but there is nothing to do there.  If you were looking for a peaceful weekend, this would be a good choice, but the only thing to do other than hang out at the b&b, would be to take a walk to the beach.  The roads are only about 10 feet wide and there are very few motor vehicles other than golf carts.  On Tangier you don't have a family car, you have a family golf cart.  But don't let that fool you.  The golf cart drivers on Tangier firmly cemented our opinion that the drivers in Virginia are the worst that we have experienced on the trip.  On U.S. 17, as I mentioned, we were nearly run off the road on multiple occasions.  On Tangier, Riley was actually hit by a hag on a golf cart who couldn't even be bothered to stop to see if he was alright.

So, the final word on Tangier Island is, while it is a quaint place to visit, don't do it!

We left Tangier and arrived in Crisfield MD, where we were treated like celebrities at one of the local pizza establishments.  The folks were amazed that we had come from California by bicycle.  The owner of the place, a woman named Billie, gave us a bag of steamed soft shell crabs to take with us.  She apologized for not being able to locate a souvenir mallet to take with us for cracking them, and was adamant that if we were still in town in the morning, that we return for a couple of welcome bags that she would go get from the chamber of commerce.  While we were sitting there waiting for our pizza, there was a loud bang that was probably a car backfiring, but might have been a gunshot.  The owners son and his friends were sure that it was a gunshot (although Riley and I were skeptical), so the police were called.  A sergeant responded and took everyone's statements and then asked us about our trip.  Before too long his lieutenant who was obviously on his day off, judging by the way he was dressed, showed up, not to look into the bang, but to talk with us about our travels.  It seems that Sergeant Taylor called him to let him know about the two guys who had biked from California.  The lieutenant is an avid cyclist who told us that he would love to ride coast to coast someday and he wanted to meet us and see our bikes.  It was indeed a very warm welcome that we enjoyed in Maryland!

We are now camped at Jane's Island State Park and there is wifi by the park store, so I'll stop now, take a stroll on over there, get this posted and then hit the showers.  Good Night.

Update: The wifi that was available at the campground required a password, but the ranger neglected to tell us what it was, so this update is now yesterday's news.

Buzzard Point Marina

July 28, 2012
Greetings from Buzzard Point Marina, near Reedville VA.
Well a week has slipped by without any update, or even any typing at all.  A quick check of my last full post shows that we were in Palmyra, after having spent 2 lazy days in Charlottesville.  We left Palmyra and headed off route for an REI store in Richmond, where we were well cared for.  As I have told you in the past, the battery packs that came with our solar panels were somewhat finnicky, and they had ultimately convinced us that neither was really working properly at all.  The great thing about REI is that in addition to having very good quality and prices on all sorts of ourdoor gear, they have a lifetime satisfaction guarantee!  If you ever decide that you don't like the gear, just take it back, so we did.  After looking me up in their database, they cheerfully exchanged not only the battery packs, but the panels as well, because I had purchased them as a package.  Hey, the new packages even included solar powered flashlights, which only one of my purchases had, but was lost sometime in the first week of the trip.
But the best, unexpected thing about our REI visit was Rob, and ultimately his friend Tim Hendron.  Rob asked where we were planning to get to that evening and I told him Mechanicsville.  Rob twisted his face in thought, trying to think of a place to camp anywhere in the general area, but he drew a blank.  That was not too surprising, as the route maps didn't indicate any places to camp either, and they have proven to be pretty thorough in that regard.  So Rob said that he had a friend who lived in Mechanicsville, very close he believed, to the ACA route.  He called said friend (Tim) who told him to send us on over and that we were welcome to camp out in the backyard.  As it turned out, Mechanicsville was a bit ambitious, but we made it nontheless, and I called Tim from his own backyard to tell him that we had arrived.  Tim and his wife Laura were very hospitable, allowing us to shower as well as camp.  Tim also brought out a box fan to blow some air through the tent, as it was indeed a very muggy night.  In the morning, there were 2 slices of cherry pie set out for us.  Another act of kindness from complete strangers, that continued to make the trip more memorable and easier for us.
After Riley wolfed down the pie (cherries rank even lower than hummus for my picky palate) we set out for Williamsburg, which is very near the end of the official route, and also happens to be where my cousins Mary and Christine live.  Mary was gracious enough to host us for 4 nights, although she did have a couple of chores lined up - moving furniture and hanging curtains - so she did receive something in return, but still we got the better end of that deal.  Mary had a full-blown, Thanksgiving style turkey dinner for us when we arrived!  During the visit I also got to spend some good time with cousin Christine, her youngest two children Renee (who became a facebook friend!) and Paul, who is Riley's age and has grand plans to take Hollywood by storm, and her husband Rick.  Rick is a doctor, and unfortunately, I didn't see him after the tick was discovered, but he did give me the established protocol by way of telephone.  Mary and Christine's dad, my uncle Bob was in town and I had my best visit ever with him.
The day after arriving, we planned to ride to Yorktown, to get to the official end of the Transamerica route.  We got a late start, meaning something like 4:00 pm, and by the time we got into Williamsburg proper, we started to get a few raindrops on us.  I looked around and saw a wall of very black clouds racing along in the same direction that we were traveling and a little faster, so I knew that we were in for a serious downpour very soon.  We raced into Colonial Williamsburg and got under cover just about 2 minutes before the clouds opened up, and let loose with the most torrential rain that I have ever experienced.  It definitely would not have been safe to be on the road at that time, as drivers' visibility would have been seriously impaired.  The deluge lasted about 10 minutes before easing off to a moderate rain.  The ironic thing is that because we had anticipated a short afternoon ride, we left our panniers, which included our rain gear, at Mary's house, otherwise we may have ridden in the moderate rain.  About an hour later another, even stronger downpour let loose.  About 15 minutes after that, the rain stopped entirely and we rode back to Mary's, dry and cool.  On Wednesday we started out earlier and did indeed get to Yorktown.  The round trip turned out to be about 45 miles, so it is probably good that we got rained out on Tuesday.  As we were nearing Yorktown, we met a fellow named Justus, who will probably be the last tourist with whom we crossed paths on the trip.  Justus is planning to take the same route that we did in reverse - Yorktown to San Francisco, and was just about 7 miles into his trip.  It was nice to be able to stop and talk to someone else riding the Transam, as we hadn't seen another tourist in quite some time.
I think that after we realized that we had some time to kill, we both got lazy in our minds, hence the extra days in Charlottesville and 4 nights at Mary's, which was at least 1 or 2 more than I had originally anticipated.  By the time that we left Mary's place on Friday, we had used up most of our extra days, so we decided to revert back to plan A, which is to get across the Chesapeake Bay and ride up the Delmarva Peninsula to arrive in Delaware.  Looking at the maps, I saw that there is a ferry that runs between Reedville VA and Chrisfield Maryland, so that is our route, rather than getting ourselves across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, which would also invole another bridge or two that are interstate highways.
We rolled out of Williamsburg on Friday, back to Yorktown and across the Coleman Bridge, which is US 17.  The ride from the north end of the bridge to Gloucester VA was perhaps the most frightening road that I have ever ridden a bicycle on.  Most of the way, there is very little shoulder and the drivers in that part of Virginia are the worst!  Highway 17 is a very busy road and the drivers gave us very little clearance, even when there were two north-bound lanes.  Probably half of the vehicles passed within 3 or 4 feet of us, and a few came within a foot, or at least that's what it seemed like as they flew by at 60 MPH or more.  On the way to Gloucester, we finally did get caught in some rain while we were on the road.  We got off the road and waited it out in the woods next to the highway.  Fortunately the rain didn't last very long, but we donned out rain jackets and did get to ride in them for the last 3 or 4 miles into Gloucester, where we opted to get a room for the night.  At the local Walmart I met a very nice couple who live in a nearby town, but are originally from Czechslovakia.  They were considering doing a cross country tour themselves, so had several questions.  They also invited us to stay at their place that evening, but understood that we probably weren't planning to go that far, as it was already nearing nightfall.
And that brings us to today.  We knew that we only had 50 miles to ride, so we didn't check out and hit the road until noon.  When we did get going it was hot and humid once again, with the temperature between 95 and 100, but we were ready to make a real go of it, and we arrived at our destination with an average speed of better than 15 MPH, which is pretty good for loaded bikes.  Aside from the heat and humidity, this part of Virginia is very beautiful.  The place where we are catching the ferry is basically a little fishing village, with all of the charm that you might imagine.  Our ferry doesn't go directly across the bay, but will be dropping us off on a little island called Tangiers, where we will have a few hours to kill before catching another ferry to Chrisville.  Who knows, we might find that we like Tangiers and stay over night, but that is not currently the plan.
That's about all the news that's fit to report.  I tried to pitch the idea of trading our bikes for a boat, then we could get home via the deep blue sea, but the locals were having none of it.  They were, however, good enough to tell me the password to the marina wifi, so I hope to post this tonight.  Oh, I called our Australian friend Denis this evening. He was back home. He had saddle sores that just wouldn't let up and forced him to call it quits in St. Louis.
Dale

Greetings From Buzzard Point Marina

Here are some of the local folks engaging in a Chesapeake Bay ritual.

Local Wildlife

Here's Dale, feeding some of the local fauna, or at least playing host to the critter.  It is particularly perturbing that this guy got a free lift for quite a few miles!

Waiting For Darkness

Greetings from my cousin Christine Samaha's house. This post was written a couple of days ago. I should have all the very latest, but you'll have to wait for a few juicy details. Here's the post:

Waiting For Darkness to Fall

We left off on Wednesday morning and it is now Saturday afternoon.  Where does the time go?  I'm writing this from a picnic table in Palmyra Virginia where we have decided to stop for the night.  I will go through a quick rundown of days and places, before waxing philosophical.

By the time we had finished our cave tour and taken time to gather our thoughts on Tuesday, it was already past 4:00, so we made a relatively short drive from Mammoth Cave to My Old Kentucky Home State Park, where we camped for the night.  That evening I called my cousin Tom, who lives in Dayton Ohio, and invited Riley and I for dinner, showers and beds on Wednesday evening.  Hey, anyone who asks for a visit ought to get a visit, if it's at all possible.  So on Wednesday we drove through Louisville where we went to 3 different bike shops before emerging victorious with the right seat post.  Then it was through Cincinnati and on to Dayton.  I actually lived in Dayton for a year, when I was in first grade, so I drove by the house where we lived and gave Riley the added thrill of showing him Orchard Park Elementary School, where I attended most of my first grade year.  Tom and his lovely wife Nancy were very hospitable, but then who wouldn't be when you're entertaining your favorite cousin?  We had some laughs, caught up on old times and made a few phone calls to other cousins, aunts and siblings.  On my dad's side of the family, there were 32 first cousins.  Needless to say, I don't keep in touch with all of them.  In fact, I actually keep in touch with just a few, but Tom is at the top of that list, so it was good to see him in person once again.

While I was at Tom's house, I received a message from my very dear friend Evelyn Fulcher, saying that Cincinnati was not very far away (from them).  Hey, that sounds like a request for a visit to me!  Jim Fulcher is truly one of the people who has had the most impact on my life.  We met when I first attended a Soul Talk in his home on Granite Road, San Marcos, CA.  Jim was a beekeeper at the time and somehow he had the crazy idea that I would have a good time if I went out and worked bees with him.  It is thanks to him that I can say that I have probably been stung 20,00o times.  Actually working bees with Jim was a lot like this trip, except that I hadn't dreamt about it for year.  It was a lot of very hard (and at times even unpleasant) work, liberally punctuated by some of the best memories I could hope to have, working alongside someone who I love deeply.  It is fitting that I would get a chance to see Jim & Evelyn (she now goes by Lyn, but I knew her long before that).  In Denver we paid a visit to Tony Chukes, who pontificated at my wedding, and in Cincinnati, we got to see Jim, who did the actual, legal officiating.  Our visit with the Fulchers was a short one over a cup of coffee at Starbucks and we spent the remainder of the day driving to Charlottesville Virginia.

I must admit that at times I wonder why in the world the Adventure Cycling Association picked the routes that they did.  It seems that they made every effort to pick the roads least travelled all the way across the country.  But then I think about the view that you get while driving along an interstate highway - any interstate highway.  The views are pretty generic, and it seems like you don't really see very much.  One thing that we did finally see while driving to Charlottesville was rain and lots of it.  That was Thursday, and we have seen some rain on both Friday and Saturday as well, but it really came down while we were driving on Thursday.  We arrived in Charlottesville around dusk on Thursday and made our way to the South Street Brewery.  We had been there once before on a family vacation about 6 years ago.  We liked it then, and we liked it this time as well, but this time, I think that I liked it even more.

A few thoughts on beer.  Bicycle tourists drink beer.  If you were to read some of the blogs written by other tourists you will often find beer being prominently mentioned if the writer discusses the cuisine at all.  We don't necessarily drink a lot of beer, but it does seem to be a dietary staple.  Rich in carbohydrates and taste, what's not to like?  From the time that we left Fallon Nevada until we arrived in Charlottesville, there have been basically 5 selections to choose from:  Busch LIte, Coors Lite, Bud Lite, Busch and Bud. It seems that most of middle America prefers lousy beer!  So the South Street Brewery was an oasis and after having such a lousy selection for a month or more, it was refreshing to actually drink a good beer, on tap no less!

Now is the time for waxing philosophical.  We will be driving home from Newark Delaware, where my lovely wife grew up.  With the passing of my mother-in-law, about 16 months ago, there has been a relatively new car sitting in the garage with no one to drive it.  That was not the reason t=for the trip, not really even a factor, but it did seem to make sense rather than flying home after getting to the Atlantic, to drive the car back to California so that it can be put to good use.

When I go on a vacation, my normal mode of operation is to just take things one day at a time.  When it was backpacking, there was no set objective for each day, we would hike until we felt like stopping for the night.  If it's a sight seeing trip, I don't make a list of sights to check off.  If I am enjoying the first thing, I might just as well spend the whole day there and skip the rest.  It just doesn't seem to be very relaxing to have to have a schedule to stick to.  And so it has been with this trip.  Well, I learned somewhat early on that this trip is no vacation, but I failed to then try to establish an itinerary to stick to.  What does all of this have to do with today?  Well, only after arriving in Charlottesville did it occur to me that Corky and her father are currently in Delaware and using said car.  It won't do us any good to show up too early because the car won't be available to drive home until they are done using it and about ready to leave town themselves.  I confirmed the dates and it seems like we could have pedaled the whole distance through Kentucky, even seeing Mammoth Cave, and still arrived in time.  Now I can't help but feeling a little remorse for having rented the Budget Truck.  I cheated, or at least compromised more than I needed to, and now we have some time to kill.  But all is not lost.  With that extra time, maybe we will not cross the Chesapeake Bay by way of the bridge-tunnel, but rather go inland, ride to Washington D.C. an spend a few days at the Smithsonian, the Mint, and various other tourist attractions.  Hey, it's still and adventure, and should turn out well, but the remorse is there in the back of my head just the same.

Well, that's about all for now.  We spent an extra day being lazy in Charlottesville and only rode about 25 miles today.  Once again, a few days off has made us soft, plus it's harder to get motivated to jump out of a (motel) bed and hit the road, when the roads are wet from overnight rain, and the sky is grey and threatening to rain some more.  One neat thing happened on our extra day in Charlottesville, which incidentally is the home to the University of Virginia.  We were pulled over by the side of the road on our bikes, while I was checking directions.  A man struck up a conversation with Riley, asking about our trip.  When I was free, I said hello and told him that we were going to see some cousins in Williamsburg.  He asked what their names were and when I said Samaha, he ask, "Rick Samaha?"  I told him, yes, Rick is married to my cousin Christine.  It turns out that he went to school with Rick and was good friends, although they hadn't been in touch for a while.  So, it is still a small world after all!

My Cousin Tom Considers Joining The Ride!

Tom has a fine rig there.

Cave Recap

It is now Wednesday July 18, 08:38 eastern daylight time.  We are currently camped at My Old Kentucky Home State Park in Bardstown Kentucky.  This is the place where Stephen Foster was when he wrote My Old Kentucky Home. I don't know if he was living here or had just happened to be here, or what. The informative part of the park is closed, so we'll just have to save that little mystery for the next time that I'm in the area. There really isn't very much to say about today just yet, so let's roll the clock back about 24 hours, shall we?

We camped in the national park campground on Monday night and although we were back on the ground after about a 5 day hiatus, we both agreed that it was a very peaceful and restful night, in spite of some tossing and turning.  That's probably because there was no traffic noise.  The bugs, however, were very loud - possibly the loudest cacophony of bugs that I have ever experienced - but they belonged and somehow added to the tranquility in spite of the din.

Yesterday's main event was, of course, our second cave tour.  This one was the Grand Avenue tour.  This tour went into the cave through a different entrance than the one we had been through the day before.  In fact the entrance that we used was completely artificial.  I can't adequately describe the interior of the cave for you, except to say that it is huge.  It's not that the passageways or rooms are all so very enormous, although some of them are rather large, but the cave has over 400 miles of mapped passageways and tunnels!  The guide mentioned on more than one occasion that Mammoth Cave is the largest (or longest) cave in the world in that respect.  It seems to me that I read an article in National Geographic Magazine some time ago, perhaps five years, that was about a cave somewhere in Mexico or Central America that is even longer, I don't recall for certain, but suffice to say that Mammoth Cave is very, very large.

We spent 4 hours in the cave yesterday and walked more than 4 miles.  We saw less than 1% of the cave.  Our trails yesterday ranged from level, cement sidewalk to sloped, hard-packed dirt & rock aggregate.  When the inclines got too steep, we walked on stairs.  And the entire length of our walk was illuminated by electric lights; dim, but quite adequate to stay on the well maintained paths.  The cave began to be explored in earnest about 200 years ago.  One name that was frequently mentioned was Stephen Bishop.  Bishop was a slave who did more exploration and mapping of the cave than any other individual, and apparently he did much of his exploring alone.  As we were walking through the cave at a moderate stroll, I was impressed by how extensive the passages are, and by how much effort it must have been to explore and map these passages in pitch darkness with the light of just a single flame from a lamp burning chicken fat, all the while having to climb over rocks and boulders.  Being able to walk literally miles through the cave was impressive.  Knowing that there were men like Stephen Bishop and others, who spent years clambering through the darkness to find and map its deepest recesses made it all the more impressive.

Mammoth Cave was a side trip well worth the taking even if it meant cheating on the cycling aspect of the journey. Today it's on Ohio so that my cousin Tom H and his lovely wife Nancy may have a visit from their favorite cousin and his son. We really are too kind - just kidding. But first, it's off to a bike shop in Louisville in search of an offset seatpost.