We’ve Gone Gold!

 It’s taken me a whole day to sit down and write this entry because I was actually more emotional about crossing our wake than I thought I would be. All of the months of dreaming, planning and finally executing came together on this day. It was a series of individual day trips and looking back I’m astounded by all of the places we went and all of the adventures (and mishaps) we had. Traveling to different places was a wonderful benefit of the loop, but as everyone will tell you, meeting the people along the way and making lifelong friends is the very best part. We never felt alone - ever. This looper community is by far the most supportive, helpful and friendly group of people I have ever encountered.

We slogged through the Great Dismal Swamp yesterday on our way to Chesapeake VA and I can now say I’ve done it and I’ll never have to do it again. It was beautiful and peaceful, but the canal was narrow, the water was skinny (shallow) and full of debris.  We definitely “bumped” into a few things, but were going slow enough that we didn’t do damage and our prop is protected by the structure of the bottom of our boat. We saw a deer, many turtles and many varieties of birds, but thankfully no snakes…

We had to wait for the bridge to raise at the end of the canal and then go through one more lock before dumping out into the river on the way to Chesapeake. Then through the Great Lock and Great Bridge to our free dockage. We are across the ICW from the place where we started the loop after having some work done and new electronics installed. (I think back to 15 months ago and we were so naive and inexperienced when we shoved off to begin our loop…) It is right at the museum and next to the hiking trails along the ICW and the location is lovely.  No electricity, so we have been running our generator to use the AC since it was 100 on Friday!

This morning we all walked the 6 blocks to Kroger and filled in on a few groceries and Tom’s cousin, Beth cane to pick all of us up about 4:30 to go to her house for a cookout. Her daughter and her 7 kids were there too, so we had fun watching all of them play in the pool. A nightcap on our boat and now to bed to rest up for our 4 1/2 hour trip south to Coinjock Marina tomorrow.







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