Alternative Trips: Chapter 1

Just finished our first day on our Land Voyage. We left homeport (Vienna VA) at 0710 on 22 Dec. We certainly did not have our act together. Forgot a bunch of stuff. Our house battery is dead. Our primary GPS is on the boat (and we cannot get to it). How exciting.

We stopped at the Dismal Swamp Visiter Center at 1115 but of course they were closed (Sunday and Monday). Lots of damage to the banks of the canal but the channel looked pretty clear. We arrived in Elizabeth City at 1230 anxious to have lunch at Constack's. Guess what, no Comstack's. Mr. Comstack decided to retire after 50 years of business. Ther is now a 'la-de-da' restuarant next door at it isn't very good.

We got some local knowledge on Fred Fearing of Rose Buddy fame. Apparently, he has been sick and was actually in the hospital for a while. We did not get any more information but they think he is OK.

We arrived at our first campground (Riverview outside of Belhaven). It islocated on the Pungo River about two miles NW of where the Pungo canal meets the Pamlico River. It is rustic.. better than the facilities at the Georgetown (Exuma) marina but not as nice as most other campgrounds he have visited. More like a fishing camp.

Well, talk to you guys in a couple of days.

23 Dec 2003, Day 2 of Land Voyage, 34 43.730 N/ 076 52.310 W

Day two went a bit better. We are getting our act together in the van. We left Belhaven around 0900 today (Tues) and met Blaine and Janet of Charbonneau in Bath NC. Had a good time with them. We heard the latest on their charity work under HogsforDogs (www.hogsfordogs.com). They are taking a year off from cruising to ... (they can say it better so checkout their web site.

They suggested that we use the NC ferry system instead of Rte 17. We took their suggestion and crossed the Pamlico and Neuss rivers via ferry. Does that count for time on the water? We had a great time and probably saved two hours of travel time.

We stopped by Beaufort NC and were profoundly disappointed this time. Sailboats were almost non-existent, the people were flaky, and generally not how we remembered it in 2001. Those of you that have been following our adventures know that we were disappointed in it in 2002 also. Oh well, we cope.

We arrived here at River View Campground at 1630. This is one of our favorite campgrounds; it is family owned and always clean. Folks here are very friendly. Bob did a bonehead thing tonight. He decided to take a 'short cut' through another camp site and got stuck (akin to gojng aground). After some work, we broke through.

Well, that's for all tonight. Catch you in a day or two.

Happy Christmas eve/eve.

24 Dec 2003, Day Three .. Barefoot Landing, 33 47.390 N/ 078 44.170 W

It rained two inches last night and everything was wet. Walking the kids was a mess. We said farewell to River View campground and headed for SC. There was nothing out of the ordinary on the trip today. Cruising is more fun, just much slower. We have the hour/day correlation for the ICW. Each hour that it takes to drive is a day on the water. Of course, offshore doesn't count. We are arrived at Barefoot Landing Campground in North Myrtle Beach SC at 1400. This is right across the street (US Rte 17) from Barefoot Landing Shopping Center which provides free dockage for cruisers on the ICW. We have never seen it on the water because we always were offshore on this leg.

Campground is great. We are anchored (oops, parked) behind the dunes that face the ocean. People are great too. The 'kids' went crazy on the beach. They wanted to run every which way. Of course they dragged us here and there. We went to the BI LO to get provisions for Christmas as we expected that nothing would be open. We got all sorts of TV dinners. We should eat well for the next couple of days. Next Land Voyage, we will make this a two (or more) day stop.