VA Beach to Durham NC June 21 Sunday

We managed to have a comfortable nights’ sleep because of the fan. The temperature when we awoke was 75 degrees; but it began to rise quickly as the sun came in the back of the Van. We quickly ate breakfast and broke down camp leaving by 8:15 – about an hour earlier than we had thought.

The trip out of the metropolitan area was uneventful with light Sunday morning traffic. We selected US 17 as our route south-west hoping to see the Great Dismal Swamp. The maps did not identify where the visitor center was and it turned out not to be on US 17 and was over 40 miles away on a side road. We learned the visitor center was not open on weekends so did not make that detour. The road was 4-lane all but a few miles (for a draw bridge) and we zipped right past Elizabeth City, Edenton, and were in Rocky Mount for lunch. Jane had been craving a hamburger for the past two days so we stopped at a Wendy’s and had a great one!

The trip from Rocky Mount to Durham took about an hour and we arrived at Jeff’s before Daniel was up from his nap. When Daniel was up we had a great adventure to Loco-Pops – the local popsicle store. They had many flavors and we all had different ones ranging from chocolate/apricot to birch beer. They evidently have some favorites all the time and a variety of flavors that change from day to day. All the flavors we had were great. We next ventured to Southern Seasons, a gourmet food supermarket, that was having their semi-annual sale!

Back at home we played and cooked up the crab cakes we had brought from the DELMARVA. They were good but not as good as the lump crab cakes from MD. We had frozen them but were really afraid to keep for 9 days so we bought on our last day in DELMARVA. I believe they were appreciated!

It is amazing how Daniel changes so quickly – it has only been about 3 weeks since we saw him but I believe he had grown taller! I took a few photos but realized the next morning my camera battery was dead and they did not take. So no Daniel photos – Robin however took some so I will get them from her…