432 Miles todayGot up bright and early, packed up and headed off to see if I could get a couple of shots of Valley Forge. I couldn't. My GPS took me right to the blocked off road supposedly leading to the park. I turned and followed the detour signs until they disappeared, then I asked Mr. Garmin to find it for me. After passing the same intersection three times from different directions I said, "Forget this," or something similar to that, and turned back toward Philidelphia with breakfast on my mind.
My destination was yet another diner from the show Diners, Dives, and Drive-ins, the Silk City Diner in downtown Philadelphia. My good luck continues as I drive up to it and see a closed building with no cars in front, or people inside. So far I'm three for five on diners. Two have been closed. In the major leagues such an average would be worth a fortune. Out here, for diners, it's still hungry and looking.
I swung down to Independence Hall, snapped a couple of pics, then took off for Wilmington, Delaware and breakfast.
Had a good breakfast in Wilmington just missing a drenching little thunderstorm which had just passed through the area. Then I headed south to the "Eastern Shore." This is a peninsula which, on the east, faces the Atlantic, and on the west the Chesapeake Bay. As you can see from the map it goes from wide to narrow ending in a 17.1 mile bridge/tunnel series going over to Norfolk.
This is really an engineering feat. The northern half cost something like $200M while the southen half was >$250M. The cost difference has to do with the different time periods in which they were completed.
This is Key West-type bridging...with a difference.
And here comes a difference.
Why expensive tunnels? National defence. The tunnels make it impossible for an enemy to bring down the bridges and trap the fleet in port at Norfolk.
After about 10 miles of bridge and tunnel there is a (very sharp) turn-off promising food and recreation. There is a restaurant and fishing pier available to the public.
There were quite a few fisherpeople taking advantage of the pier. Of course, the $12 toll raises the cost of fishing.
Arrived in Fredricksburg about 7:00pm and met Claye at her house just off U.S. 1 and the Rappahannock River. After cleaning up Claye and I went to dinner and caught up on our rides history. As mentioned in yesterday's blog, Claye is an Iron Butt and one heck of a rider. She also has an excellent blog showing off her excellent photographic skills (and patience).
You must have captured those photos of Independence Hall in the early morning hours before the tourists started milling around, or do they not allow the tourists that close, anymore? The Chesapeake! I can almost smell it (at least the way it smelled many years ago). Chincoteague, the home of Misty and Sea Star, and all the wonderful characters (real people and ponies, not fiction)of the Marguerite Henry books I so loved. One of these years I must go in August, when they round up the wild ponies on Assateague and swim them across the channel to Chincoteague for the pony auction and festivities. They do it to cull the herd before each winter. Then, they swim the remaining ponies back to their protected sanctuary of Assateague. The ponies are supposedly the descendents of horses that swam from a sinking spanish galleon, but there are less romanticized theories, as well.
ReplyDeleteDid you stop for some Chesapeake seafood?