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.
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