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Connecting With Nature

This Brown Pelican came along side to check us out. We would later see flocks of them swooping and diving in the wake of our boat. Our passage over shallow waters would often kick up something they could nab.

Everything else of size has to sail back north to exit the city. Not us. The Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) allows us and smaller craft to avoid the Atlantic Ocean and stick to the backwaters. The transition from urban to rural was surprisingly swift.

Cormorant Clutter

Though Norfolk dropped behind us quickly there were isolated reminders that the Navy has many tendrils reaching out past the port. Best guess for this location is that the buildings are Navy ammunition bunkers.

Dead end? No, but it marked a short stop for us at the Great Bridge Lock, the only lock on the ICW.

The lock makes neighbors of us all for about 15 minutes. Captain Snyder has a feather touch on the controls as he snugs the edge of our ship up to the tie up bollards. Take a quick look at the powerboat on the right. Do you see the furry speck that caught my eye?

Emerging from around the starboard side comes the resident cat. Guess it makes more sense to keep a cat than a dog on board.

Not at all what we expected - this run of the ICW resembled a Louisiana swamp. Indeed this manmade canal runs through the appropriately named "Dismal Swamp. As foreboding as it looked, the swamp was once home for runaway slaves.

Our moorage for the night was at Coinjock, NC. The place is not on many maps and probably familiar only to those using the ICW. The little store there capitalized on its pint-sized reputation by selling T-shirts that read "What Happens In Coinjock, Stays In Coinjock." This flyspeck sized place is thought to get its name from the Indian name for mulberry.

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More Than Just A Navy Town

These beautiful bricks lined a portion of the "Cannonball Trail", which is a meander through parts of old and new Norfolk. 

A Mix Of Old & New

One stop along the historic walk was at this Civil War monument. Apparently Norfolk was also the site of the annual reunion of veterans. The plaque on this face of the obelisk dated 1951 commemorated the "The 61st and Final Reunion of the UCV". UCV were the United Confederate Veterans. 

The Hunter House Museum. Built in 1894 by James Wilson Hunter. He came to this city as an orphan and built a small empire. None of his 3 children married and so the last one deeded the family home to the city to be operated as a "as a museum and example of American Victorian Architecture". All furnishing and fixtures were left intact.

This is a portion of St. Paul's Episcopal Church. Besides the building being notable for being the only colonial era building that has survived the many sieges laid on the city, it is also the final resting place of a cannonball fired in 1776 during the Revolutionary War. It is easily visible in this image.

Looking like an artistic accent, this mermaid is actually one of many that we spotted along our walk. 1999 a local attorney started "Mermaids On Parade" it was a big hit with the whole community.

Norfolk's mermaids all have names. This one is called Lola. 

The sun was never much in view while in port so this sunrise color was nearly all we got. The large white shape towards the left of the picture moved very quickly. It overtook us as we came into Norfolk and docked before we arrived. It was the Norwegian Dawn.

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Norfolk: The Navy Owns It

Not much space for words but lots of room for big ships. Above and below is the retired battleship, the USS Wisconsin, now a museum in Norfolk. 

Looking straight on, its 108' beam gives no clue to its 887' length. It's sleekness contributed to a top speed of 28 knots (or 32 mph).

One of the first ships to be seen this day as we entered Norfolk just after dawn was being refitted: the USS Abraham Lincoln. They are prepping her for a nuclear reactor overhaul. As massive as this ship is, at the waterline it is only 26' wider and 156' longer than the much older Wisconsin.

At one point on our slow crawl along the Navy base's waterfront, it seemed that all you could see were Navy vessels .

Not every power unit at dockside is a boat. You have to wonder in the Navy's far flung kingdom where these shrink-wrapped locomotives are headed. Certainly the rail line code "EMBX" spray painted on the plastic should be a clue the name of the line but online I couldn't easily match those initials with a rail company.

This is the Arleigh Burke in dry dock. The keel was laid in 1988 and commissioned in 1991. Note the 4 turquoise colored objects being delivered to the ship. These are not high tech electronic devices. They are a gang of four, clean, porta-potties being delivered to the Burke. It makes sense that while in dry dock none of the ship's plumbing would be of use for those working on the ship - hence the periodic removal of the fouled heads with clean ones. I know, more than you ever wanted to know about this crap.

The last vessel is unnamed or at least no numbers have been painted on. The lines of the ship look like the same class of ship as the neighboring Arleigh Burke. This ship has several years ahead of it before it can be commissioned.