The Virginia Blogs: Cape Henry

No, not the cat.

We went on another weekend adventure, this time to lighthouses. I like lighthouses.

But, like many of our adverntures, these lighthouses are not in a normal place, like at the end of a spit of land that you can walk to. No, no. They are on Fort Storey. An Army Base.

Now, the army and the APVA came to an agreement that the public could be let in to see the Old Cape Henry lighthouse, provided they consent to a search.

This is an army base search people, not a TSA airplane search. TSA could take some pointers. You must, ahem, "cut off the engine"*, open the trunk, open all doors, step out and pop the hood. There are three gentlemen (sometimes a woman) who do this search, plus the gate guard. They stick their head in, check your stuff out, and then check under your car with that little mirror-on-a-stick thing. When they are done, they each call out what they were checking.

"Trunk Clear!"
"Interior Clear!"
"Engine Clear!"

You are now allowed to get back into your car and go along your merry way with a visitor pass to the lighthouses. Welcome. Speed limit is 25. There was a sign that said, 26 IS ILLEGAL.

Ok. I'm on an army base. I'm doing 25, and that's it.

The lighthouses are really not that far into the base, though it's a little strange to drive through one of these things if you've never been on a base before. Things like signs for Rifle Range are right next to Rec House. Eep.

You round the first corner and there are the two lighthouses: Old Cape Henry and New Cape Henry.

New being relative, of course.

Let's start with Old Henry, first, shall we?



Old Cape Henry lighthouse was the first public works project of the new United States in 1789. It was reviewed by President Washington himself.


It's a beautiful building and it says a lot about it's contruction that it's been standing since 1791. You are allowed to walk up to the top, which we did. It's only got 94 stairs, compared to Old Barney's 217 and High Point's ~270, it's a breeze.

If you're in shape and you don't hate spiral stairs**. Neither of which apply to me.



I had to stop at the top and just start breathing again. And then I had to stop thinking about falling backwards down the stairs and trying to not be afraid of height. I don't know where this came from, but I wish it would go back there.

It was worth it though.





We started back down and down was easier, except for that feeling like I was falling. So when we got back down we started to walk around the building. I had to take one of my favorite persepective pictures.



So, a little on the New Cape Henry Lighthouse.



New Cape Henry Lighthouse was built in 1880 and put the Old Henry out of business in 1891. It was only operational as a lighthouse for 50 years before the light ships started taking over. You cannot climb that lighthouse because of the army equipment. Nor would I want to climb it, really. Old Henry sits on a tall dune, and New Henry on the flat beachhead. It's probably a few feet taller than Old Henry. What does that mean?

More spiral stairs. Thanks, but I think I'll pass.

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*Now, there's a regional expression that just crisp my cookie. "Cut off the ______." Choose: Light, engine, power, gas... anything that the rest of the world would choose to turn off, they cut off. I had to stop correcting people left and right; I was making enemies.
**I don't know if you've read the German Blogs yet, or if I've posted that one, but I mention my undying love for spiral stairs in them.

The Virginia Blogs: Meet Our Kitties.

I'm sure that most people who pop on here and read this know that we have cats. But I thought that I would tell you a little more about them, since I'm always talking about them and spending massive amount of money on food and litter*.

Two of them are adopted from shelters, and the third has a little story to go with her, which I will share with you, my faithful readers.

Let's start with the cat I've had the longest:

Meet Sarabi.



We also call her Pretty Kitty, and I call her Miss Kitty once in a while as well. She was the first cat and I got her as a kitten. I went to a PetSmart adoption and they didn't have any kittens there who weren't already spoke for. One of the foster parents offered me the chance to go to her house and visit the litter she had home who weren't quite ready to be adopted out yet. They were just too young.

I walked in and this little striped tabby with a hint of cinnammon in her coat and white patch on her nose walked up to me, sniffed me and walked away. They foster mom said, "That's her." I followed the kitten and picked her up. She looked at me and started chewing on my hand**. I told the lady I'd take her.

She called me less than three days later and said she was ready to be taken home. I was a little confused because less than a week before she was way too young to be adopted out and now she was ready? Well, I went and bought all my supplies and went to pick her up. I had to lock the little thing in my pseudo-kitchen in my first apartment for a few weeks, but she sure didn't like it.

I took her to the vet the next day and they were a little shocked at her size. She was TINY. Really tiny. The doctor looked at her and said, "I doubt this kitten is the eight weeks they say she is. She's 6 weeks at best and too young to be away from her mother. Make sure you take care of her and give her some KMR*** for the next two weeks."

She did fine. She had huge ears and she was curious as all get out and I lost her a few times behind the couch. She is the queen of the house and she has an attitude. If she comes up to you, Do. Not. Pet. Her. She will swiped/hiss/bite because it pleases her.

The problem is here that she is the sweetest cutest cat ever when no one is around. As soon as people show up, she turns in Demon Cat, and I don't know why. She purrs and nuzzles and sleeps on me, but no one but Tom ever sees this. We know she's a demon when people come over, so we have worked it out so that she gets the second floor when we have company. I don't want people to be subjected to her moods.

She shares that second floor with Henri:


Henri's full name is Henri Dexter Houdini Kitty, and also call him OJ. I refuse to try to explain that nickname.

Henri's adoption was an accident. I didn't mean to get a second cat so quickly after Sarabi. I was going to wait a year and then think about adopting an old cat. But I walked into PetSmart and there he was. An adorable, dopey kitten who kept meowing at me. I coudn't help myself, I put in the adoption papers and they were ready to let me take him home that instant. There was only one hitch. Sarabi had never been tested for FIV/FLV**** and they couldn't release him to me unless she was negative.

I drove home like a maniac and shoved her in the carrier. I drove like mad to the Vet's. The drew her blood and told me that the doctor couldn't see me today. I told them I only needed the results of the test because I was adopting another cat. Twenty minutes later me, Tom and my FIV/FLV negative kitty sped back to my apartment. I dumped her, and took my carrier and her papers with me.

I got home an hour later with a little black dopey kitty. He's as dumb as stump, but the most wonderful, tolerant little cat ever. He was also nameless for about week, and was very nearly named Xerxes.

He got one night when I got home from work at 11 p.m., and I seriously thought that he was gone forever. I walked around screaming for Henri to come back. As I was about to give up an hour later, I spotted him walking up my neighbor's stairs and he tried to run away from me. I grabbed him by the tail and took him back to my apartment. I cried for 20 minutes before I could calm down. He's been afraid of the outside every since.

Most people don't believe that he exists. He's skittish, the ultimate scaredy cat. If you ring the door bell or knock on the front door, he's gone for an hour; if you come in to the house, he won't come out from under the bed until you leave. He nuzzles everything. As I'm writing this he's nuzzling the window sill. Not a bright kitty. He and Sarabi are friends.

They and Motley don't get along:



The other two were staring out the window and seemed agitated. We looked out the window and there was a grey cat staring back at us. It was the middle of winter and she looked terribly cold. So I rigged a semi-water box for her and put a towel in it by the corner of our house.

She used that little box through the storm and into the early spring when it just became kind of beat up. She was there every day, and it started to become clear that she had no home. Because she appeared on the heals of one our neighbors leaving, we believe that she was a “dump” – they just couldn’t be bothered with her anymore. We started to put out a bowl of dry food for her in the morning. Just a little because we didn’t want her to starve.

That turned into a daily occurrence, and we would be happily greeted by her when we came and went from the house. She snuck in a few times, and we got her back out. I decided I needed to find out if this cat had a home, so I pulled out my camera and took a few pictures of her. I noticed the calico pattern under obvious grey tabby stripes. I looked at her, and said, “My goodness, but you have motley colors.” And it stuck. She was now Motley to us.

For a good four weeks I put up posters around, gave them to vets, checked the PetSmart. Nothing. No calls from anyone. I changed tack and went to the local pet adoption organization, Hope for the Animals, and gave them her picture. We told them we would care for her until she could be placed.

Six week went by, and there was not a nibble on her being adopted. We were standing outside, and she was sitting between us. My husband looked down at her, then back at me, and sighed. “Take her to the vet; we’ll take her inside.”

I did; someone had loved this cat. She was as healthy as horse, so as to say. Already spayed, we got her her shots. Motley was now an indoor kitty. I noticed a few days later that there was something wrong with her; there were little white “rice” all over the place when she sat. Back to the vet, and a pill later, she was cleared of the tape worm.

Since that day, Motley has been an indoor cat. She loves to nap, loves ear scratches right behind her big grey ears. She loves being petted, not scratched, everywhere else except her stomach. Don’t touch the tummy. She isn’t a lap cat and doesn’t like being picked up (but she’ll tolerate it). She will settle right next to you on the couch, and put her paws on your back and sniff your head. She’s very vocal; you will never not know where she is when she’s meowing. She is like a motorboat when she purrs, and she purrs a LOT and very loudly. She likes to play with string and chase straws. She’s just like a kitten when she does; she’s been pegged at about 6 and a half years old.

Motley is leash trained.



As you might suspect, she doesn’t precisely go for a walk. She will go outside and sit. And sniff. And sit. And sniff. And wander. And then want to go back in. But she loves to go out on that leash and be outside for just a little while.

She will answer to Motley or Mots. We also called her Matzah ball, Mozzerella, Stink Muffin and Spare Cat. The Spare Cat comes from the fact that we weren’t supposed to have 3 cats in our townhouse, so we always joked that she was a spare if one of the others went flat.


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*And which Tom diligently observes, "If you didn't feed them, the litter wouldn't be a problem, would it?"
**Kitten teeth are not very threatening.
***KMR = Kitten Milk Replacement
***FIV is Feline Immunodeficiency Virus, Kitty HIV. Not contagious to humans. FLV is Feline Leukemia, not contagious to humans. But both are extreme contagious to other cats, and there are people out there who take on ONLY FIV/FLV cats so they have a home too.

ADDED in 2020: 
I'm sad to report that we've lost all three of these fuzzies. 
We lost Sarabi and Henri in 2016 within weeks of each due to a wasting disease the doctor and I are convinced was tied to the 3-year rabies shots we'd given them. 
Motley was with us until 2019, aged anywhere between 23 and 26! She was very healthy right until the last two weeks of her life, and she let us know it was time. <3 

We have other kitties that I'm sure you're already aware of from newer posts. :) 

The Virginia Blogs: A Weekend Adventure

I know that it's been well over a week since I last posted; I apologize. Between getting over the sickness and getting over the shrimp and barley disaster, I simply couldn't bring myself to post. Traumatic, you know.

Any way, I thought that I might catch up this week a little, before my camera uses up all 450 available pictures on the memory card*.

Last weekend, we decided to check out Virginia Beach's beach. Just for a walk on the "boardwalk". I also happen to love the ocean in winter.

So we, ahem, mosied down to Rudee Inlet and parked. It was not crowded at all and I think better than half the hotels were shut for the season. One of them had some guys working on the balconies, on a Sunday. I guess the summer season was coming and they had to get the upgrades done.

This is Virginia Beach in March:



Very pretty. Very cold. Very windy. Very empty. I'm sure that by the beginning of May we're going to start hearing about Friday evening piles ups on I-264 to the beach.

Now here's the thing about the "boardwalk." It's not. It's made of poured concrete. There's no rides on it at all. There are no games. There's no fun pier or recorded people screaming at you to WATCH THE TRAM CAR PLEASE!. While I don't really miss the tram car thing, I did miss all the games and rides. And that the pier, the only one we could find, was a fishing pier and it was closed.



That was as close as we could get to the darn thing on the sand. But before I go on about the pier... Let me tell you about Salesman.

He was a friendly gentlemen standing near the entrance to the pier and greeted us on the way in. I, learning that a friendly hello is always the way to go, returned the greeting and moved on. We peered out of the locked gate down the pier, wishing we could walk down it to see if there really were hundreds of pelicans sitting on the thing. No luck, locked tight.

So we turned around and wandered into a tourist trap shop to check it out. All the usual touristy stuff: sand dollars and sponges and t-shirts for your friends, family and pets. It gave us a respite out of the wind for a few, and then we walked back out.

Where Mr. Salesman was waiting for us. He sucked us by asking where we were from. This is difficult question for me to answer right now because I always trip up and say Philly, assuming that the person mystically knows that we just moved into the Hampton Roads area. Not true in this, I remembered to give the correct town. He responded by pointing out that I have a camera and he thought that we were tourists.

Note to self: Hide camera inside coat from now on.

He launches into this schpiel about this new tower going up and that we can get a free stay in the place for a long weekend if we just simply take the tour and get some relative/friend to book a 2 night stay there and blah blah blah blah.

Meanwhile, I'm thinking,"Oh crap. Now what I have done? I don't want to tour anything. And I don't want to get suckered into a timeshare." Which was basically what he was trying sell us. He went on and on for about five more minutes, when he got to a requirement.

"...And all you have to be is twenty-eight years old. How old are you ma'am?"

Like lightning the answer came out of my mouth, "Twenty-six."

Salesman turned to Tom and said, "And you sir?"

"Twenty-six also," he said, hot on my tail.

Salesman sighed, closed his book, and said, "Then we'll see you back here in two years."

We politely nodded and headed back down the boardwalk. I turned to Tom and said, "Well, I don't mind being twenty-six again if got me out of that."

"Nothing like ripping six years off your life to get out of sales pitch."

"Hey, whatever works."

So we continued down the boardwalk to the next beach entrance and I turned and walked out into the sand.** I still wanted to find out about this pier.

So on to the closed pier. I saw it in the distance and decided that it was a good place to turn around on our walk and head back to the car.

However, the railing looked funny. It looked like it had jagged spikes on it, and I was trying to figure why someone would put spikes on a fishing railing if you have people casting over the side.

Well, the answer was simple. They weren't spikes.

They were pelicans.



Pelicans are a natural, native inhabitant of the Chesapeake bay. I remember going over the bridge tunnel about 10 years ago and marveling at all the dang pelicans all along the bridge. Since we weren't really all that far from the bay, these particular pelicans decided to roost on the closed fishing pier.

I really wanted to see one dive, but they weren't having any of that. They just sat there. Didn't even really ruffle their feathers. Eventually, I decided the whole thing was a little too Hitchcockian for me, and we headed back down the beach.

Rudee Inlet, compared to the ones I was used to at the Jersey Shore (Manasquan, Barnegat**) is small. Even the jetty on the way in and out seems small.



The one advantage I can really see here is that it's a wide beach. Not nearly as wide as Wildwood***, but wide enough. Jersey is getting hammered with the problem of the shrinking beaches where they have to truck in sand every year to keep the whole Shore from washing away. It all ends up in Wildwood and Cape May. But I don't think that they have that problem here.

Or maybe they do. We'll find out after the first Hurricane, eh?

Oh, and note to the Hot Dog in the fish boat-- the channel markers are there for a reason, not a slalom course. Thanks.

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*I really can store 450+ pictures on the thing, but the only time I came close to ever using that up was in Europe. I dump it pretty quickly after hear my friend swearing on the other end of the line that she just lost over a year of pictures by hitting the wrong button. Yeah.
**Words of advice: no matter how cold it is, take off your socks and shoes. There is nothing worse than trying to get sand out of your shoes for two weeks.
**Holy poop. I didn't know there was a REEF at Barnegat. Hmph. Learn something new everyday.
***Wildwood. Gorgeous beach, great sand, but you have to start hiking down the beach at 6 a.m. to hope you get to the water by noon.