All the boats in front of us along facedock left early giving us an easy exit from Coinjock Marina. We encountered quite a bit of barge traffic and led us to remembering our days on the inland rivers. When you've seen a single tug pushing 35 loaded barges on the Mississippi, a single on the Pungo River is uneventful. Most of the day was just about making miles through undisturbed wetlands. Most daymarkers were the foundations for active osprey nests.
Single trees sprouted along the transition zones. Their natural shapes have been allowed to fully develop in unobstructed light. We crossed the "state line" into Virginia and began to re-enter civilization. I think it would be nice to have the same welcome signage on the ICW as on the highways. Jets from NAS Oceana soared high overhead drowning out all the sounds of water and wildlife. We encountered two bridges that needed to open for us to pass. We were thankful that we weren't making the trip in the Laughing Place which had at least a 64-foot air draft. It would have been white-knuckle time for sure. We arrived at the free dock at Great Bridge in early afternoon and relaxed for a few hours by watching the boats go by.
The new Great Bridge Battlefield & Waterways History Center is under construction in the adjacent park. We walked around the grounds and look forward to coming back when its open. Great Bridge was the site of Virginia's first land battle of the Revolutionary War. We continued our walk across the bridge to a strip mall where we got dinner and hit Kroger for Barry's final (maybe) half-gallon of milk on our Loop adventure. While at Kroger, we spotted our first "welcome home" sign -- that for Ukrop's products. The display had all the essentials -- white house rolls, chocolate fudge pie, rainbow cookies -- but willpower won out for today. Sometimes its just nice enough to know the treats of home are readily available.
A peaceful evening was derailed by computer issues. After a year of downloading pictures, my hard drive is now full and forced me to delete before adding. I deleted then ran out of gas and called it a night. Sorry for the late post.
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