Yes, we really are still alive and well. It appears that four months have passed by since our last update. It’s been a busy time for us, and we are sorry that this is so long. In the future, we will try to do a newsletter more often.
In our last update, we were headed for Washington, DC and a visit from our daughter and her family. After we left Annapolis, we had about two weeks before we needed to be in Washington. We were going to be headed south on the Chesapeake Bay and retracing some of the areas that we saw while heading north, but that’s ok because we haven’t been to any bad places yet. We left Annapolis and headed down to Galesville, MD where we discovered a very nice little creek to anchor in that had a lot of modest homes and a couple of marinas. It was very quiet with a number of other boats anchored around us. We left there in the morning and found that the Potomac River and St. Mary’s River were also very pretty and peaceful. We stayed for 2 beautiful nights in the St. Mary’s River before we headed further up the Potomac River to Cobb Island. We couldn’t anchor anywhere in this particular spot, so we went into a tiny marina and stayed for 2 more days. There wasn’t much on Cobb Island to see or do, but we did meet some nice people. One of the things about the Potomac River that surprised us is that it is so wide (3 to 5 miles across) that there really isn’t much to see unless you’re very close to shore which is where all of the shallow water is. It’s almost like boating offshore out in the ocean.
After leaving Cobb Island, we made a very short passage across the Potomac to Colonial Beach, VA. This is another small town that’s considered a golf cart town. You can drive golf carts all over town. So, we rented a golf cart and went sightseeing as well as made a stop at the local grocery store. It’s really a neat little town with a lot of very friendly people. It’s a wooded area with a lot of small homes nestled in among the trees. We departed Colonial Beach headed further up the river to Woodbridge, VA and Belmont Bay. This town seemed as though it was all condos. Everywhere you looked there were condos, condos and more condos.
We were anxious to get to Alexandria, VA so we only stayed a short time in Woodbridge and then traveled a short distance up to Alexandria. We had made a reservation to go into the City Marina there and were not disappointed. It is right in the middle of
town and at the base of King Street, the main street in town. The river walk area that is adjacent to the marina is the place to be in the evenings. There is live music, a variety of street vendors and a bunch of people. It really was a fun spot. We went out for dinner one evening and dined at the same restaurant that George Washington used to frequent back in the 1700’s. Believe it or not, but it has remained in operation for over 300 years. By the way, the food was really great!Well, it was time to move on to Washington, DC. This was part of our original dream and relentless desire to do this trip on the East Coast. And you know what? It was worth all of the planning, money, and hassles to get there. To be able to sit on the aft deck of our boat in the evening and have a glass of wine while looking at the Washington Monument is a thrill we will never forget.
We had made reservations at the Capitol Yacht Club to dock Diamond Girl for a couple of weeks. Our daughter Michelle, her husband Scott, and our three oldest granddaughters came and spent a week with us. They arrived while we were experiencing an outrageous heat wave: temperatures in the 90’s wouldn’t have been so bad except that the humidity was in the 90 percentile as well. Yikes!! Needless to say, we went sightseeing everyday in all the historic (air conditioned) buildings we could find. We finally decided that we had absorbed more than enough history. Washington is great but needs to work on its crime issues. You can’t walk the streets at night in our nation’s capitol. That is truly a shame!!
The Capitol Yacht Club was a great place. We enjoyed the people and the club’s facilities. We went to a few of their activities and dinners. It was a club very similar to Seal Beach YC: partly volunteer and partly professionally run. It was a delightful place to spend some time.
When we finally left DC, we headed back down the Potomac River (95 miles). We stopped in a couple of the same places as when we went up the river, but at this point we were anxious to leave the Potomac and get into the Rappahannock River, another very large river. We anchored in a little town called Urbanna and stayed for a couple of very restful days.
After that, we decided to make a run to a little anchorage and town that we had been to earlier in the year, on the way up the Chesapeake Bay, called Deltaville. It is in Virginia on the Jackson Creek. After a couple of days at anchor, we decided to move to a marina because Tropical Storm Ernesto was coming our way. Well….after NOAA said that the storm was diminishing with only 30 knot winds predicted for our area, we ended up actually having 60-65 knot winds for about a 12-hour period with a tidal surge of 4.5+ feet. It definitely wasn’t a fun experience!! But we made out OK and learned a lot of valuable lessons. We don’t need to go through any more of that kind of storm. Diamond Girl will be hauled out on the hard the next time that happens, and we will enjoy the storm from a very secluded hotel in the middle of Nebraska.
After everything settled down, we had some work done on our generator before moving on. We decided to revisit Hampton which is just across the water from Norfolk, VA. Hampton is a small community with a very nice anchorage so we stayed there for 4 days. While we were there, they were having a 2-day event called “Bay Days” which was their celebration of the end of summer. Let me tell you, these people really know how to party. They had the most spectacular fireworks display we have ever seen. Wow….it was unbelievable!!
We made a short passage down to Portsmouth, VA where we spent the better part of a month doing some long overdue maintenance to the boat. We have been running Diamond Girl extremely hard since the beginning of this big adventure of ours, and “she” was in need of some TLC. While we were there, though, we had a visit from some long time friends of ours. Roger and Carole live in Simi Valley, CA which is where we lived while raising our family. It was so good to see friends from home and reminisce about old times.
It was now early October and the weather suddenly turned very chilly. Fall had definitely arrived. The time had come to start heading further south in search of warmer climate. So…we began retracing some of the stops we had previously made on our trip north last spring plus we added a few new overnight stops to our itinerary. One of the more interesting locations was a little spot called Mile Hammock Bay. It’s part of the Camp Lejeune Marine Training Base. While we were anchored there, we could watch the marines performing special maneuvers. Fascinating!
In our opinion, the most beautiful place we’ve traveled to this past year is Jekyll Island in southern Georgia. We spent my (Elaine) birthday there and thoroughly enjoyed the area. It is so lush and green....absolutely incredibly
gorgeous!! We took a long bicycle ride exploring the island and all of the magnificent, restored mansions of the rich and famous. That evening we went to dinner at a little restaurant which was right there at the marina where we were docked. All in all, it was a fabulous birthday!Continuing south along the ICW, we made a few more stops and then put the pedal to the metal to get down to Palm Coast, Florida. Brian and Tina, our dear friends in Seal Beach, California, recently bought another home in Palm Coast….with a dock behind it. They generously offered to let us dock there and leave Diamond Girl for a couple of months to allow us the opportunity to fly home for the holiday season.
At the moment, we are in Portland, Oregon visiting with our daughter Traci, her husband Matt and our sweet little 2-year old granddaughter Maci. We are having a wonderful Thanksgiving with them. We will be here until early December at which time we will be headed for southern California. (We’ll send out a holiday letter at that time.) We plan to see as many of you as we possibly can while we are in town.
Hopefully, everyone had a fabulous Thanksgiving holiday with loved ones. Take care, and we will be in touch again soon.
