Day 2 - 2025 East Coast Adventure - Dolphins and a Water Park in a State Park

 7/19 - Chesapeake, VA to Killens Pond, DE

Well the anticipated storm as we went to bed arrived and dumped LOTS of rain on us.  AS such, we had a damp start to morning. Amy woke early and had gone out for coffee (I forgot to pack ground coffee - first discovered mistake) and gas us up. She encountered lots of closed stores that early, but persistence paid off. 

We enjoyed bagels for breakfast and then boys explored park while Amy and I packed up trailer. We had a long drive day so we didn't linger.   

After a minor detour, we found the route to the bridge tunnel highway. After a quick inspection "are your propane tanks closed?", we were onto the bridge/tunnel.  As our first surprise of the trip, before we reached the first tunnel section, we saw 30-40 dolphins in the water!  Unfortunately, only Sebastian and I got to see them before we drove past.  However, we all got to see many kayakers/boats enjoying their Saturday on Chesapeake Bay. We enjoyed the novelty of the tunnel sections, but fairly quickly we were back on land and heading north towards Maryland and then Delaware.

The day called for a meet up with Sebastian's friend who spends his summers in Delaware with his grandparents. After a short stop for lunch at Subway, we picked up his friend and then headed to camp. 

At camp, we quickly set up the camper so Sebastian's friend could see it. Then we changed into swim gear for the highlight of the Killens Pond state park (at least according to the boys), a water park!







Initially it looked like it would rain/thunder, but thankfully the weather stayed clear and everyone enjoyed 3 hours of water slides, rope/lily pads, and just soaking in the water. Unfortunately for Amy, they had a VERY strict rule about jewelry and since she didn't think she could get her nose ring out and back in, she was forced to pass on the water slides for the day. 

As the park was closing, we packed up and then dropped Sebastian's friend off. We stopped at the grocery store to grab some more produce and went back to camp for some pasta. 

The night largely had gotten away from us. However, we still tried to start a fire but with the damp air and intermittent storms, the wood simply wasn't ready to burn. Hopefully we will dry out and have more success as the trip goes on. 

While not a nature filled day, we moved pretty far north and had a great time with friends for the afternoon. A pretty successful day! 

# miles - 435
# states - 4

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thoughts after a month back home

Image
It's been a month since I got home.  I wanted to put some notes of reflection on record, but I also wanted to have a chance to re-connect with the normal world before I did.  30 days feels like a good number of days to have the perspective to come to some conclusions on the trip and life in general.  So, here goes. Main notes from the trip     - The USA has a LOT to see in it.  As a family we only entered ten states and really only entered two of them (Idaho and Arizona) in passing on the highway.  We spent almost eight weeks in these eight states and saw snow capped mountains, farmlands, deserts, canyons, rivers, waterfalls, rain forests, sandy beaches, rocky coasts, and volcanoes.  There are many countries that can't offer half of this list.      - Despite having nine weeks to do all the exploring we did, it felt rushed.  We covered almost 7,500 miles in those nine weeks so there's a reason it felt rushed, but when I left, of...
Read more

Day 1 - 2025 East Coast Adventure - On the Road Again

Image
7/18 - Raleigh to Chesapeake Well, we're underway, but no thanks to me. I SIGNIFICANTLY underestimated all the things left to do to get underway this evening. I started the day with maintenance on the camper (always best to do the day of travel) and then worked my way to other activities.  However, when Amy got home, there was still a LOT of material that had not been packed in either Rover or Dover.  As such, our packing became more of a "throw it all in the camper and figure it out later". And, in an auspicious start to the day, this new technique was done in the middle of a random downpour. Since we were now starting in the middle of Friday rush hour, we learned that there was traffic on our route.  So we diverted and got a tour of eastern Wake county. I can say that corn looks good, but the beans look GREAT.  Given the potential, this start to the trip turned out to be a really nice way to start the drive. We were cruising along on 64, which had surprisingly low...
Read more