Trish & Anne RV Adventures

After driving over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel on Saturday, May 24, we picked up another car, and went to our campground, Northwest River Park, which is a city park that is actually southwest of Virginia Beach. When we arrived, we had some lunch and then rented a canoe to explore the river. Caught a turtle and some nice scenery on film. It might look deserted, but it was the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, so there were actually lots of folks renting canoes and kayaks. In fact, we had to wait for someone to come back to the dock to snag a canoe. We are also very glad for the help of some strangers when we got back to the dock and couldn’t get the canoe back onto the easy ramp (we are also glad no one was filming us.)

On our Sunday RV move, we were early to get into the RV park, so we parked in a Walmart and took the car into Virginia Beach. The Atlantic Wildfowl Heritage Museum is housed in the de Witt Cottage, which was built in 1895. It is right on the boardwalk and is now almost the only building that isn’t a hotel that is on the beach – also, it has a small parking lot that is free. (A real plus when we were seeing parking spots going for $50/day.) The property is now also the home of the building that was the first free standing library in Virginia Beach – started in 1931.

The house has been the home of the Wildfowl Museum since 1995. They have lots of old duck decoys, the original artwork for the 2025-26 Virginia Duck stamp, this carving of a brown pelican, and some beautiful stained glass pieces.

Here is a picture of the deWitt family, which occupied the house the longest. There is one room that is decorated with period furniture – you can also rent this room – though with the openness of the museum, not sure I’d want to.

On the left below is an old photo of one of the guns that were used to shoot into flocks of ducks, and below that is an actual barrel of one. On the right is a picture of three of the deWitt brothers taken in the 1930’s – these three are Paul, Cornelius & Peter. Below that is one of the first hollow surfboards made in Virginia Beach. Peter de Witt and several of his friends built their boards in the mid-1930’s, improving on a design that had begun in Florida.

We found a Mexican restaurant for a late lunch where Trish talked me into posing with these wings. Then it was time to move the RV to the RV park. Once we settled in, we walked around the park, and played some corn hole – the two bags that you cannot see did not go through the hole but slid off the back of the board. We are not great corn hole players. This was a KOA holiday so there was lots of other entertainment around – pickleball, ping pong, bikes to rent, a large pool. Since it was a holiday weekend they also had some food trucks on site, and they had a band that played from 6:30 to 9:30. After listening to the music for a while we got a Philly Steak Grilled Cheese Sandwich from one of the trucks and went back to the RV to relax.

We started Monday by getting fresh made donuts from another food truck in the campground. Then we bought a daylong pass for the trolley into and around Virginia Beach. Trish wanted to see the fishing pier, so we got off at the nearest stop and walked to the pier. All along the boardwalk are these posters about Heroes. They are put together by local high schools and covered heroes from the Revolutionary War all the way to the Iran and Iraq wars.

In the distance you can see the fishing pier – it was about 3 long blocks away. But it was the kind of beach day that we like – a little on the cool side and not much sun, so the walk was pleasant. The entrance to the fishing pier, some parasailing adventures, views of the beach from the pier (for some it was a swim day) and a shot looking out the pier at all the folks fishing.

One of the things mentioned in the information about Virginia Beach is the King Neptune Statue, so we hopped back on the trolley and rode the 15 blocks that way. It was sculpted by Virginia-based sculptor, Paul DiPasquale in 2005. It’s 34 feet tall, that octopus on the base is 8 feet across, and the loggerhead turtle that is hand is on is 10 feet in diameter. And nearby was a more colorful loggerhead statue.

As we were walking down the boardwalk they were setting up for a festival that would be held the next weekend – the Jackalope. Here they were setting up what I think was a skateboard course. There was also going to base jumping, BMX racing, jet ski competitions and more, Glad we were not going to be there – I think it would be a zoo. There were also these very pretty fish statues.

One of the places we passed along our walk back along the boardwalk was the Naval Aviation Monument Park. There was a plaque honoring Eugene Ely. He was the first person to take off and land on a ship – though these were different flights. It was in October 1910, that we took off from a ship in Norfolk, VA and landed on a beach. It was January, 1911 when he took off from land and landed on a ship in San Fransisco harbor. He was a civilian, as there was no Naval Air Corp or Air Force at the time. He was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross by Congress for his contribution to aviation. There were also other statues and plaques honoring the history on naval aviation. The statue of the woman is the Norwegian Lady. It is modeled on the figurehead of the Norwegian ship the Dictator, which was shipwrecked off the coast in 1891. About half the crew was saved by the local Life-Saving Service using a breaches buoy. The original figurehead was displayed until 1953, when it was severely damaged in a hurricane. This replacement statue was created in 1962 – there is a duplicate in Moss, Norway, which is where the ship was from. And we spotted some very big pelicans.

Trish had found us a place to eat, so we walked back down the boardwalk for about 13 blocks. Along the way we saw the Dolphin watch boat hanging around, and then we eventually spotted the dolphins they were watching. We also passed the Virginia Beach Sister Cities pole – not sure you can read it, but Moss, Norway is one of the sister cities. We were disappointed that the restaurant was out of She Crab soup, so we made do with crab cake sandwiches. Then we were back where we started and we took the trolley back to the RV park. I couldn’t resist a picture of this very pink themed boba shop next to the trolley stop.

After resting at the RV for a while we drove back into town to go to the lighthouse – but it is on a military base and access was closed off by the time we got there – so a no go. But they did check our IDs and held onto them until we actually made a U-turn and were heading out of the gate. We had glimpsed this building while driving through town, so on our way back we drove closer to it. It is the Historic Cavalier Hotel, opened in 1927. It has a Y shape so most of the rooms have a view of the Atlantic Ocean. It has had many famous guests: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Bob Hope, Elizabeth Taylor, Judy Garland, Doris Day, Bette Davis, Muhammad Ali, Presidents Harry Truman, Jimmy Carter, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and more. It underwent a 4 year renovation in the mid 2010’s. When we saw that the going room rate was over $500, we decided not to even set foot in it, and just drove on.

There is a walking tour of the murals in Virginia Beach, so to kill more time we drove around looking for some – we found these and many more. I can’t really tell you anything about them – but most of them were very good! Next time maybe we can take the tour.

On Tuesday we were having our tea and coffee and Trish said – there’s a pileated woodpecker. I was able to spot which tree it flew into and got couple of decent shots.

Our first stop of the day was the Military Aviation Museum. When we arrived we had a chance to look at some of the airplanes in two hangers at the visitor center. The majority of the planes in these hangers are US Army and Navy planes from WWI and WWII and are flown at least once a year, if not weekly (they give rides on the weekend over Virginia Beach.) I took pictures of all of the information signs about these planes – if you want any details, reach out to me. I also found the displays of the planes identifying marks interesting – you don’t want to shoot at your friends.

At noon we joined a guided tour of some of the rest of the facilities – we had to drive about half a mile to two other hangers. The first was a replica of an Allied hanger – but it was 3 times as large as what would have been built during WWII. What you see in the picture, is 1/3 of the building. Inside, there more many more planes, again, most in flying condition. Remember I told you about Eugene Ely, the first person to both take off and land from a ship – well in that second row of pictures are a picture of pictures of both events, and a replica plane that was built to fly on the 100th anniversary of his flight. (By the way, Ely died just short of his 25th birthday when his plane crashed during an exhibition flight.) And there were lots more planes.

The last hanger was this reconstructed German hanger from Cottbus Airfield. The museum rescued it when the back wall and most of the frame were all that remained. They brought it here, reconditioned what they could and bought a new shell for it. When they were working on it, one of the restorers found a signature on the back side of one of the beams – it said “Waclaw Anusik worked here on October 14th, 1944.” They rigged up this light and mirror so you can view the actual signature. Anusik was a Polish prisoner used as forced labor by the German army. You can read more about him in the picture below. And there were more planes.

Last stop here was this restored airfield watch tower from RAF Goxhill – it was the first airfield in England turned over to the US Army Air Force in WWII. The two-story brick and concrete structure was completely disassembled from its original site in the UK and shipped to Virginia. This is the only such original control tower in the US, as most of the others in the UK have now been declared historic sites. The inside is furnished with period pieces that show how the building would have been used during the war – the control area, the weather room and the communications room. Next to our guide in that picture is the landing control board – they would use this to keep track of the planes that left and came back to the field. If a plane didn’t show up, they would contact the other air fields as sometimes they couldn’t make it back to their original field. There were thousands of miles of telegraph and telephone cable that were buried underground between the stations to keep any spies from tapping into them.

It was 2:00 before we got back to the RV and it had started to rain, so we decided punt our plan to go to the aquarium, ate our lunch and just hung at the RV. But we did find a place to go for ice cream late in the day. Gerald’s makes ice cream with nitrogen, just like our favorite – New City Creamery in Sudbury. Trish suggested that they add a Vanilla Bourbon to their menu – but the flavors they did have were pretty good. In the same shopping center was this clothing store that I couldn’t resist taking a picture of (we didn’t go in.) Then it was back to the RV to sit out more rain.

Wednesday we were headed to Richmond, VA. It was foggy and cloudy as we were driving through Hampton, through yet another tunnel and by the Hampton Coliseum. We were heading to the Virginia Capitol Building, but when it was still raining after lunch, we altered our plans and decided it was time to make this trip’s deposit – so we stopped in at Rosie’s Casino for a couple of hours. Our campsite was just north of Richmond and we played some more Rummikub before heading to bed.

Thursday, May 29 was a travel day to my cousin’s in Maryland. We took a non interstate route that avoided Washington, DC and Baltimore by taking off on US 301 just after Richmond. It was much less hectic. We had our first BBQ and we went back over the Chesapeake Bay at Annapolis.

Details on our cousins reunion next time.

Until then, safe travels.