Norfolk and Hampton, Virgina

 Reaching Norfolk is the end of the Intercostal Waterway. From this point on you travel through bays, rivers. lakes and canals to finish the Great Loop.  Norfolk from the water is quite the experience.  Norfolk is the largest naval base in the world , a huge ship building and commercial shipping port. There are dozens of military ships, the biggest cranes in the world,  loading docks, etc. for a ten mile span.  It's really noisy with all the operations going on.

Went through the live artillery area while underway.  When the military is shooting, (small artillery), they post a red flag on the beach.  If they see a boater coming through they take the flag down and stop shooting.  It was no problem for us, but you wonder......

Spent a couple of nights at Salt Ponds Marina  because of weather.

25 - 30 knot winds with gusts up to 40 today- not going anywhere!

We celebrated our 35th anniversary tonight.  We rode our bikes to the ONLY place within miles (Bill found it on the internet)- normally we wouldn't even have gone in a place that looked like this.  At Josh's Bar and Grill, a small local place, the atmosphere was lacking but the food was great (just the way it was advertised). They made an announcement that somebody's bicycle lights were on in the parking lot - mine - then a Harley motorcycle guy comes out and tells us we are in HIS motorcycle spot, and everybody knows it's his.  He was actually cool and  invited us to come back again.   Inside people talked with us (we stuck out like sore thumbs) and ended up taking our picture and clapping for us for our  35th anniversary.  You never know what each day will bring.....
                                                                 

Norfolk

NOrfolk

US Navy Hospital ship

HUGE crane

bridge opening for us

spring is arriving

Salt Ponds Marina (Hampton) entrance.  It was already a really shallow entrance, but on top of that the tide was ultra low and the wind blew water out of the Chesapeake bay.  We came in with only inches to spare.   We only  had 3 foot clearance on each side of the boat to the sand.  Talk about stress!! The conditons changed on while we wee underway- this wasn't supposed to be like this!

Hampton

Norfolk