Kiptopeake State Park June 19 Friday

What a nice slow morning we had. Jane cooked biscuits, sausage and gravy. There will be enough for tomorrow. The rain from last night was gone leaving beautiful blue skies. After breakfast Jane went on an excursion to several shops she had seen on the highway and to Cape Charles. Ben elected to stay behind at camp and download and study the photos he took at Winterthur.

When we visited Cape Charles 10 years ago we remember a small community with almost no businesses. Today the main street is full of nice shops and the bay area has a boardwalk and stairs over the dunes. The beach was very nice with a number of people sunning and swimming. The shops I visited were very nice – the art gallery had nice stained glass and woodwork as well as jewelry and various paintings. Their water tower is painted to be a lighthouse. One of the shop keepers said the new condominium and marina had been very instrumental in turning the area around.


Art Gallery in Cape Charles


Water Tower in Cape Charles looks like a Light House

We were back at the campsite for lunch and some reading before our venture out for the afternoon. We drove south the three miles to the end of the island and stopped at a Wild Life Refuge. We saw baby osprey in a nest. They have placed a web cam to view the nest. We also walked down a trail to a marsh view area where we could see the Smith Island Lighthouse and remnants of World War II Gun Emplacements. We continued north on the peninsula to find some fish and scallops for supper. We bought scallops and trout at West Seafood. They also have crab cakes which we may go back to get tomorrow morning and freeze them to take to Jeff’s.


Smith Island Light - this was as close as you can get


World War II Gun Emplacement

Back at camp we headed to the beach area for Ben to try his hand at crabbing. He got his cage down below a pier and then tried the line and net method on the beach. He saw two crabs that got away before he got the net ready. The seaweed made it very difficult to see the crabs. After over an hour of crabbing he gave up – the worst of it was his crab cage string broke and he lost the cage – the water was too deep to go in after it…


Crabbing - Ben uses net and Chicken Gizzards on String


Ready to Drop Crab Pot

Supper was good with Jane cooking – trout, scallops, hush puppies, and asparagus. The campground is filling up today. There were only people on one side of us yesterday and none behind us. Now we have neighbors on all sides.

The sky is clear tonight so we will likely not have a repeat of the thunder storms that plagued this area last night. There were tornado warnings in Virginia Beach and all around the Hampton Rhodes area. We had some rain but no serious storms. It was interesting to watch the weather warnings go all around us. We leave tomorrow for a short about 40 mile trip to First Landing State park.