After our weekend in Ocean City, MD, we continued south on the Delmarva Peninsula into Virginia.
The road is primarily divided highway, traffic is light, and best of all – you completely bypass Baltimore and Washington DC!
We stopped at the very tip of the peninsula, just before reaching the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel.
We could have made it all the way to Suffolk, where we’ll be spending the rest of October and most of November, but we wanted to check out the area around Cape Charles first. We’ve been researching a couple of options for volunteering next spring/summer so we wanted to take a look around and meet the staff and current volunteers.
Sunset Beach RV Resort is on the Chesapeake Bay side of the peninsula, and a great option for checking out the area. It was very quiet during the week in October, but we hear it gets quite busy in the summer.
I can certainly understand why – the RV park is in a great location on the bay, with a beautiful beach, and a restaurant that overlooks the Chesapeake Bay.
This pool looks amazing!
We also understand how the resort got its name – we had some great sunsets while we were here!
Our first stop was the Eastern Shore of Virginia National Wildlife Refuge, directly across the highway from the RV Resort. The refuge has 6 RV sites for volunteers, and primary duties of volunteers are manning the Visitor Center, maintaining gardens, outreach to the public, and occasional work with the biologists.
We met a few staff members and several of the current volunteers. Everyone was very friendly, and it looked like a very good option for volunteering in the area. We drove past the RV sites, which were about a mile into the refuge, next to the maintenance garage and shop. The sites were very nice – several on concrete and the others on gravel with concrete patios.
Our next stop was Kiptopeke State Park – about 2 miles north of our location, also on the Chesapeake Bay. The campground has 2 loops of full hookup sites, and several small loops of tent sites. They have both Camp Host volunteers and Maintenance volunteers, both of which are located on sites within the full hookup sites.
The sites are large and back up to the woods, which is nice. We spent quite a bit of time talking to the current Maintenance Hosts. This also sounds like a very nice place to volunteer.
There are picnic areas and cabins, also. and a large beach and public fishing pier.
The beach looks very nice.
Looking out into the bay from the fishing pier, we saw two lines of large old ships creating barriers out in front of the state park.
They are old WW2 ships that we brought into the bay, and filled with concrete to sink them into place. They provide protection for the State Park beach and pier, as well as a habitat for fish and birds.
Kiptopeke is a very nice state park, and looks like an excellent volunteer opportunity. We’re leaning toward this one for next summer, but still have to finalize a few things.
With our research complete, we went to check out the little town of Cape Charles.
It’s a cute little town on the Chesapeake Bay, with a nice downtown area and public beach and fishing pier. We parked downtown and walked toward the water.
Cute old houses
At the beach
It was low tide while we were there, an we watched this Great Blue Heron doing some fishing.
Until he flew off, anyway . . .
We learned something new at the fishing pier . . . in Virginia, you can fish at a public pier without a saltwater license, as long as you register for a free Fisherman Identification Number. That was pretty interesting . . .
There were a few people fishing and crabbing . . . but nobody catching anything!
Cape Charles looks like a nice quiet area, with the only downside being that each time we would want to visit Nicolas, we would need to cross the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel – we would rack up a few tolls, I’m sure!
We’re still investigating some options on the Norfolk/Virginia Beach side of the Bay, too, but it looks like we should be able to line something up.
Nice seeing places you've never been before.
ReplyDeleteHopefully you'll find the perfect place to be close to Nicolas.
Be Safe and Enjoy!
It's about time.