Hampton

Driving to Hampton, VA, to visit my cousin and her husband, my first car trip since my eye surgery three weeks earlier, went well enough.  I left in the daylight, after rush hour, and arrived early in the afternoon at Buckroe Beach where my cousin has a condominium.  Buckroe beach is a quiet, laidback small sandy beach on the Chesapeake where it flows into the Atlantic.

My cousin's unit has a view of the beach, only 60 feet away.  We walked a couple of miles along the beach when I arrived, my first substantial exercise, sort of, since my operation.

Then we went to the Hampton History Museum, which had a very informative exposition on the history of the Hampton Road area from Indian times to the present.  There's a lot that goes on there beyond recreation, as NASA has a presence there and there's a large military presence there in addition to major shipbuilding in the region.

That evening she and her husband treated me to dinner at a waterfront restaurant.  It had very nice views of the harbor.

A trip to the beach

Last week I went to Buckroe Beach in Hampton, Virginia for a trip to the shore.  My cousin Liz and her husband Bill from Colorado rented a cottage a block from the beach and invited me to stay for a few days.

It was good to see them, and I went into the water with their two little granddaughters, who are just learning how to swim.  The beach is actually on the Chesapeake Bay, near where its water merges with the Atlantic Ocean, so the water is warmer there than elsewhere in the region and the waves are less powerful although there is quite a current that flows through there.

I got in a two-mile run along the beach's boardwalk and watched the sunrise both days I was there.  On one run I fell in with Sherman, a man about my age, and had an interesting conversation with him about sharecropping; he was the son of a sharecropper in the region and he described this system of farming to me after he inquired if I had ever heard of sharecropping before (I had).

We went to tour nearby Fort Monroe one day, and saw the cell where Confederate president Jaff Davis was imprisoned after the War of the Rebellion.  After a couple of pleasant days at the beach I drove back home, much refreshed.