Spring Break Trip - Day 1

I got up early, packed and left the apartment at 0800 so I could pick up the rental car. I took the bus to Eisenhower Avenue and then walked to Pickett Street and the Hertz car rental place. Had to wait in the rain for about 30 minutes before they opened. Meanwhile, Mollie got herself up, finished her packing and ate breakfast. I returned to the apartment with our car, a white Kia Optima, so I could pick up Mollie and finish packing. Mollie asked me to get some medicine for her (she had a bad cold) and I did. By 1045, we were on the highway, driving south via US-1 and I-95. There was LOTS of traffic. Mollie figured out that the Google Maps function on her phone could be used with the rental car’s system. Near Fredericksburg, she started coordinating that function in our car so we could find an alternate route. As we drove city streets near town, we stumbled across George Washington’s boyhood home. It started to rain pretty hard by this point. We had some great conversations about life, school, relationships, friends and our Summer Vacation. Simultaneously, we made our way to I-264 and then I-64. We stopped in Jamestown to get a Colonial National Park Passport stamp (1420). While there, we bought an Annual Park Pass but we didn’t stay because we’d already visited the park when we lived in Virginia Beach. We then drove (via the Colonial Parkway) to Fort Monroe NHS and got another stamp. It was still raining there but we walked around in the Casement Museum (interesting). We drove back to I-64 and used the HRBT (despite a traffic jam). We followed the Google Maps until we reached our first overnight location (Little Creek / Fort Story Joint Expeditionary Base). We checked into our room (1730) and then went exploring in our old neighborhood on Little Neck. It actually had stopped raining by then and the weather cleared up nicely. We saw our old church, house and the kids’ school and stopped at our neighbor's home (we found out they'd moved). After this trip down memory lane, we followed US-58 to Great Neck Road and drove up to Shore Drive. I found a few restaurants that I recognized and ended up selecting Shorebreak for the place to eat. We had salad and pizza, along with some really good frozen smoothie drinks. We finished eating (with leftovers to go) by 1830 and drove back to the Base. There, we explored places I’d been during CorTraMid, checked out the beach and marveled at the “Gator Freighters” that were in port. Back at the Navy Lodge (2000), we tried to check out a movie to watch but there weren’t any good ones. Instead, watched TV and Mollie did some homework. I learned that she had been given a school assignment of writing a travel blog from the trip we were taking. We headed to bed at 2230.