Early morning, before Mike started work, we pulled away from Reedville. Jen drove and it was another easy day on the water. Mike watches weather carefully to choose the right day to travel. If the wind and waves are too much, we either leave before or after it.  Mike has gotten very good at using the weather data to determine when to travel.

We arrived at Harbor Island Marina in Solomons MD easily. The waves picked up a little as we turned out of the Chesapeake Bay but calmed down when we got to Solomons Island. Lenny, the marina owner was great. He helped tie us off and showed us around the marina. His family has owned the marina for a couple generations, so he is well known in the community. The building he uses across the street for him office used to be a bank. Lenny gave us a tour and showed us where the big safe used to be, and how they built in an escape hatch just in case someone ever got locked in the safe.

After we got settled and Mike finished work, we walked over to the Tiki Bar for some dinner and drinks. The bar has a band on the weekends and is a local favorite. The travel and heat left us all feeling dehydrated, so the waitress kept the water coming…eventually she just brought us a pitcher of water. The band played a variety of music, and we knew most of the songs. We recommend the Mai Tai’s, they are very strong and very good. After many many drinks, we walked back to the boat and went to sleep.

Today was a lazy day. Kelly and Jen enjoyed hanging out with Mike while he worked.

Our center air conditioner in the salon stopped working today. After bouncing a few ideas around and calling a few friends, we were about to fix it thanks to some barnacle buster.

Harley ran around and played with his new pal buzzard today as well. It’s cute watching Harley roll around with a dog of that size.

We pulled away from Yorktown today. The current was calm. We untied from the cleats and the current gently pulled us away from the dock.  

The Chesapeake Bay was calm and easy. Jen set Wishes to autopilot and we cruised to Reedville, MD!  It is days like this that we love….its why we are doing the loop!

On the way, we passed a old lighthouse that was once for sale! It comes with .68 acres of shoreland for $250k. The interior pictures show that it needs a ton of work. It was great thinking about the possibility of living in a light house!  

We arrived at Buzzards Point Marina in Reedville safely. For the first time, the dockmaster was unavailable to catch a line. Kelly and Jen were able to toss lines over the tall pilings while Mike perfectly parallel parked us! ….guess we saved on the $10 tip to the dockhand.

The Marina location has no amenities anywhere. It is a place to sit and enjoy the view. The marina is tucked away in a cove with few houses around. When we arrived, we thought it would be the perfect place to paddle board until we turned the underwater lights on at night. We saw thousands of jellyfish!!  That quickly ended our hopes.

Harley made a friend at the marina. He is a 60lbs rescue puppy, such a sweet dog. Harley and Buzzard loved running around and chatting each other.

Because WIFI was unreliable, we decided to play Uno vs. watching a movie. Jen won! Then we went to bed early.

Today Jen went for a run around town, she ran about 2 miles.

One of the dockhands offered to take Jen to the grocery store so she was able to get a few essentials, coffee creamer was #1 on the list of things to get. We are so grateful for rides to the grocery store, and all the kindness we have received along the way during the loop.

Jen and Kelly went to the beach this afternoon. It’s so close to the marina you could throw a baseball and hit it. It was a very nice relaxing afternoon.

The coast guard was practicing docking drills today at the marina, it was really cool to watch. There was about 18 boats in total.

For dinner Katie from Silver Linings made fish tacos. They were very yummy.

It was a stormy day, Jen did some website work.

Today, our friends on Silver Linings arrived. Katie’s uncle lives close by and drove us all to Colonial Williamsburg. All 8 of us fit snugly in his car! 

Colonial Williamsburg is a recreation of a town in 1638. It became the new capital of Virginia in 1699.  Many of the buildings are original and others are recreated using the same tools and materials as much as possible from the era. Each building features a retail business to learn about such as blacksmith, shoe maker, clothing, wigs, courthouse and governors home. We got to watch them make nails for the floors and sew shoes for the staff! As well as talk to a man working in the wood shop, he was making a wheelbarrow for the laddies who work in the garden. It was cool hearing about how they make everything the same way they did back in the 1600’s.

For dinner, we took a bus to downtown Williamsburg and ate a microbrewery/taco restaurant. It was very delicious, and spicy. Afterwards Katie’s uncle drove us back to Yorktown and we all ate ice cream at Ben and Jerry’s.

We love a small town farmers market and this one did not disappoint!  Yorktown has a large open grassy area in town and uses it for events including a farmers market. We bought some local wines, potato chips, button zucchini, Heirloom tomatoes and huge green onions. Grocery stores have been “basic” lately and it’s making us miss our Texas HEB! These farmers markets help compensate for it.

In the afternoon, we visited the American Revolution Museum of Yorktown.  Kelly has been reading a biography about George Washington and was excited about the museum. The success of American Revolution was largely accredited to George Washington and Ben Franklin. Franklin traveled to France and lobbied to the French to help American Patriots which got the French to help Washington to win the war against the British. Thank God for Washington and Franklin!

At the museum, we learned about day to day military life. They recreated a military camp. We saw their tents which was 7 feet by 7 feet and held up to nine soldiers! We learned about the medicine and tools doctors used which was very primitive and painful! We even got watch them shoot a real cannon!  

Afterwards we walked through the Waterman’s Museum in town. They had a lot of cool model ships.

Afterwards, Jen made tortellini soup which was delicious as usual!

Good bye Portsmouth hello Yorktown!

We read concerns about current at the Riverwalk Landing marina being strong. We needed to arrive during slack tide so we pulled away at 10 am to hit the timing right. It turned out to be a bonus for us.

As we left Norfolk, we saw a Navy ship coming in from Poland with all the sailors dressed in their dress whites lined up on deck!! Just passed them we heard the military on the radio letting boaters know they needed to move 6 miles west because they would be dropping and testing bombs! If that already wasn’t enough military action, we heard on the radio about a submarine coming though the channel and for boats too clear out of its way! And, we saw/heard many military aircraft fly by…..the sounds of freedom!!

We arrived in Yorktown at slack tide just as planned and it was easy docking. We backed into our slip with no issues. It was beautiful, good job Mike 🙂

Yorktown is a cute little town with a small beach. We enjoyed some beers from the Hampton microbrewery on the flybridge, along with some margaritas.

With perfect weather, easy travels and a great location, it was a good day.

Today, we did some cleaning and laundry to get ready to move again. Our next location, Yorktown, does not have laundry facilities so we need to get it done before we leave. We’ve enjoyed our stay at Portsmouth. We will miss the view of Norfolk across the Elizabeth River at night. It has been one of the top city views.

Today we traveled to Hampton to visit Fort Monroe. Fort Monroe is rich with history. The first ship carrying slaves arrived here, then it became a haven for slaves to be freed. Which is way today the fort is nicknamed “Freedoms Fortress”. It was a hospital during the civil war. Even Harriet Tubman worked at the Forts hospital. The Fort was used for several wars. And, countless Presidents visited the Fort including Lincoln. Jefferson Davis even spent some time in a jail cell at the fort. They still have the flag that was hanging in his cell at the time.

There are lots of pictures below, Jen made sure to take a lot of pictures of the information we learned.

Today, it was taken over by the city of Hampton and is used as a park and the buildings are rented as home and apartment living. The beautiful homes tend to be rented by retired high ranking military personnel. There is a waiting list for some of the homes.

We also got to see a pet cemetery for dogs that served in the military, cannons, a lighthouse and the moat around the Fort. The buildings where they fought the wars were mostly in tact and we got to tour those as well. There is so much history there that it is hard to summarize. We’ve loved learning about our early American history and its given us greater admiration and appreciation for those that fought for our freedom and to make our country great.  

Learning about our history has been a huge highlight of our trip.

Afterwards, we had lunch at a marina/restaurant located at the Fort and then stopped a the microbrewery for some beers to bring back to Mike!

The girls then drove back to Portsmouth to get ice cream at Rick’s again. A quick trip to Food Lion and then we dropped the rental car back off at the airport and took an Uber home. Our drive was so very nice! We loved chatting with him, he has 2 kids and we were telling about about all the fun historic places we’ve been and places to take his kids. He was so friendly and was such pleasant way to end the day.