Wednesday, 13 March 2019 (Beware the Ides of March!)
 |
| today's route |
To go from Newport News across to the Norfolk area there are choices of water crossings. The bridges across the James River all seem to be toll bridges. Across Hampton Roads are 2 bridge-tunnels: the older I-64 Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel and the newer I-664 Monitor-Merrimac Bridge-Tunnel, both free. I chose the latter because I read that the lanes are wider than on the other.
I was lucky to have been forewarned by the camping couple I'd talked to in my last campground: they said I'd need to stop before crossing the bridge-tunnel to tell them my propane is turned off. I said I'd never had to do that before, and they said the sign insists on campers and RVs as well as trucks.
Turns out they were right, though I didn't find that information anywhere online. The sign says RVs too, and when I pulled over at the propane inspection station, a man wanted to know if my propane was turned off. I hadn't turned it off because I hadn't really believed the couple, so he insisted I do that. Then we had a nice little talk about the West Coast, where he hopes to visit this summer, and the Bay Bridge up by Annapolis where someone has a bridge driving service (he looked like he was ready to quit his job and take up bridge driving for a living), and various other travel related topics.
I was determined not to be freaked out by either the bridge or the tunnel and I wasn't. Yea! Neither one was all that long and the lanes were wide enough for me not to worry about my mirrors. It was weird that the tunnel went down so far below the water that I felt my ears pop from the pressure change, but it was no worse than on an airplane.
I've been getting more worried about Gracie because of this jumping up and running around the RV and shaking her head. I decided it was probably something wrong with her ears and yesterday called a Banfield for an appointment for her. Also to get Lily's claws clipped and to get tick meds for the dogs. The earliest I could get was at 2:45 this afternoon, meaning I was sure to get caught in rush hour traffic, but I didn't want to put it off. Of course, as soon as I made the appointment, Gracie stopped acting weird, but I still thought I should take her in.
Campground
What I did was go first to my new campground so I could get checked in and not have to find my new site after dealing with traffic. And I'm glad I did because I didn't like the site they'd given me. All the sites are narrow, but this one was made more narrow by encroaching trees and had to be approached at an awkward angle and had a tree right smack at the turning for the entrance and a dog tied up outside the next door camper - I squeezed in there and decided I did not want to do that every time I left to go sightseeing, let alone deal with the neighbor's dog when I took mine out. Fortunately, they were willing to put me in a much better spot - fewer trees, wider site because nobody was on one side, better view, and no dog tied up outside next door. Much better.
And I left right away to go to the Banfield and just barely made it in time, going from Chesapeake to Virginia Beach - about 10 or 15 miles but it took a while.
Banfield
Of course they were running late and it was after 4:00 before we got out of there. But the vet and the nurse were very patient with all my weird critters, which helped. And the vet assured me that Gracie's ears were clean as a whistle. Lily's claws got clipped - she seems a shade calmer about it now, her 3rd time since I adopted her - but I'm still not trying it by myself.
And we had a long discussion about tick medicine and how to coordinate it with the flea/heartworm medicine I already have. I found my records are incomplete because I'm certain I got Gracie her 2nd Lyme booster shot but have no idea when or where. I'll have to go back through my credit card receipts to try and find it, because otherwise I'll need to get her the series again, Lyme disease not being something I want to fool around with.
My advice to anyone thinking of taking a trip like mine and including pets is to figure out a system before you leave for documenting every shot and vaccination they get, a system that's easy to keep current so you will keep it current. I've always been a very organized person but have learned organization is very hard to maintain with this kind of life. If you're currently a little sloppy about stuff like that, do some really hard thinking about how to keep your pet healthy.
The road back to the campground
This chunk of Virginia isn't exactly a peninsula because it's attached to North Carolina, but it's crisscrossed with water bodies everywhere. You can hardly turn around without going across a bridge, some of them toll bridges, some drawbridges, some old and picturesque. Just in the Norfolk/Virginia Beach part there's the Elizabeth River - Eastern Branch and Western Branch and Southern Branch, the Lafayette River, the Lynnhaven River, Little Creek, Little Neck Creek, Broad Bay, and a few other creeks and bays. Plus the Albemarle & Chesapeake Canal, that connects the Southern Branch of the Elizabeth River to the North Landing River. And that's just the eastern half of this area. I'm in the western half by the Great Dismal Swamp, which is where I'm going tomorrow.
It was going on 6:00 by the time we got back to the campground. So glad I'd already checked in.
By the way, I found out about those arms that can be lowered to block the entrances and exits to the highway. I did ask a Virginian who said she had wondered the same thing when she moved here a few years ago. They're used in case of emergency when the highway needs to be made one way on both sides - like an evacuation route for tsunamis or hurricanes. It never would have occurred to me but makes sense.
The star magnolias are suddenly in full bloom and are just beautiful. Spring must be coming.
Back when I was leaving Newport News, I stopped for gasoline and the woman working there told me she'd moved over to this side from Norfolk back when the war was on in the '80s. She said they had closed all but one entrance to the base and traffic was backed up clear across the tunnel, so she moved over to the north side. She said back then, Newport News was really rural with lots of cows and a dairy and fields. Now those areas are filled with strip malls. Reminded me of seeing cows in the fields between Richardson and Dallas in the mid-60s. The fields are long gone.
No comments:
Post a Comment