Leg #4 -- 8/4/13 to 8/18/13 -- Southport, SC to Hampton, VA

We flew in to Wilm­ing­ton via DC and took a rental car to Whole Foods then got to Deep Point Marina around 11:00am.  We got boat ready and kids sit­u­ated and took off for Wrightsville Beach that afternoon

                                       .
Wrightsville Beach Marina was a great spot to lis­ten to the music and people/boat watch.   We walked to the Yel­low Mush­room for good pizza and then went back to the marina where the kids took a dip in the pool.
We left Wrightsville Beach very early so that we could make the Wrightsville Beach Bridge and the Onslow Swing Bridge on their timeta­bles.  We made it to Beau­fort, NC around 3:00pm.  Randy from Loon came over to wel­come us into our slip at Beau­fort Marina—what a nice sur­prise.   We met other Loop­ers from Snow Daz and com­pared notes.

The kids and I walked around town while Ken caught up with Randy.  The next day, Randy brought his truck over for us to use and showed us some sights while dri­ving him back to his house.  We took a dinghy ride with the inten­tion of tak­ing the short­cut  to Shakelford Island but  instead got stuck in the mud which proved to be the excite­ment for the day.  The kids swam in the river, walked the beach, gath­ered mud and saw a few of the wild horses—it was a sim­ple and beau­ti­ful day.
The next morn­ing we headed off to Fort Macon for our his­tory les­son.  It was very inter­est­ing to hear how this fort was used over its’ life­time.  A visit to the nau­ti­cal museum in Beau­fort, which is hous­ing an exhibit on Black­beard, and a stop at the boat build­ing museum sealed out edu­ca­tion for the day.
On to Ori­en­tal in the after­noon and a stop at the Ori­en­tal Marina & Motel.   I took instruc­tions ade­quately on tying up to the fixed dock!   It’s a quiet lit­tle vil­lage so we walked around and ended up bring­ing back 4 desserts to eat after we had left­overs for din­ner.  I have to laugh at how Cierra LOVED this dessert buffet !
We took off to Okcra­coke in the morn­ing.  It was a fun spot where we rented a golf cart and also got the bikes out.  Again, a lot of eat­ing  and walk­ing.  The kids and I vis­ited a bunch of shops to find some­thing for User­ica and Tri­ton as gifts.  We went to the beach which was quite a long walk from where we had to leave the golf cart.  We had hoped to take the ferry to Hat­teras but the lack of trans­porta­tion to the ferry land­ing made that impos­si­ble.  We walked to the Light­house, ate break­fast at the new Fly­ing Melon and had a nice din­ner at Dajio’s—we even kind of got dressed up.
8/10/13 — On to Man­teo where we tran­sited a very shal­low and nar­row entrance to this marina.  It was a nice, cute town with plenty of food and shops—it was just so unbear­ably hot that it was hard to stay out too long.  I did the boat laun­dry while a storm blew through.  We ate din­ner right next to the marina because of all of the rain.
After walk­ing in the morn­ing and see­ing a bit more of Man­teo, we left and headed to Eliz­a­beth City.  It hap­pened to be Sun­day and though the city appeared to be strug­gling any­way, today it looked deserted.  We tied up to the munic­i­pal bulk­head and took a walk around.  There really wasn’t any rea­son to stay in town so we headed over to Pel­i­can Marina.  We were hav­ing trou­ble with the gen­er­a­tor and Ken was able to find a guy to work on it and replace the bat­tery because of a bad cell.  We ate din­ner next door and since I had a bet going with the kids—we all ate alli­ga­tor bites as an appe­tizer !  We had another storm with a great deal of light­ning when we got back to the boat.
We left Pel­i­can Marina at 6:26am to make the Eliz­a­beth City Bridge before 7:00am.  Then we cruised pretty fast to make the South Mills Lock by 8:30am.  We then entered the Dis­mal Swamp.  It was a beau­ti­ful tran­sit.  The area is a wind­ing and nar­row chan­nel for most of the way with beau­ti­ful trees hang­ing over the water.  We hardly saw any other boaters the entire trip. 
We stopped at the Vis­i­tors Cen­ter and bought a few hats and shirts.  We made the Deep Creek Bridge and Lock in time. The Lock­mas­ter edu­cated all of us on the his­tory of the man­-made canal.  We learned that the Belt­line Bridge to the south of Nor­folk was closed until 7:00pm so we had to find a place to hang out until we could tran­sit the water under it—so we tied up at Eliz­a­beth River Boat Land­ing.  We made it into Water­side Marina in Nor­folk at 7:15pm.  The amount of mil­i­tary ships in this area is amaz­ing and you can see them best from the water.  Din­ner at an Ital­ian restau­rant on Granby Street.
We had a great cou­ple of days tour­ing Nor­folk.  We toured the USS Wis­con­sin and museum—a must see with infor­ma­tion about the whole Hamp­ton Roads area’s his­tory.  We did some shop­ping and Lynx got a “hair­style” cut.  We hit as many dif­fer­ent “types” of restau­rants as pos­si­ble because Cierra wanted to explore dif­fer­ent cuisines.
8/14/13 – We left Nor­folk for Hamp­ton in very strong winds so we trav­eled slowly and arrived at Hamp­ton Pub­lic Piers around noon.  We walked around some and then Ken took the kids to the Vir­ginia Air & Space Museum.  I rested and then took Lynx to some crazy 3D movie after din­ner at the  
VASM IMAX Theater.

The next morn­ing, we left Hamp­ton for Salt Ponds around 8:00am and it was a long, rough 11 miles once we hit open water.  We got into the marina around 9:45am.  We rented a car and went to York­town for a tour and din­ner.  More his­tory for all of us.
We had quite a rou­tine going by now– I get up and walk, the kids study for 3 hours and then we go do fun stuff.  Every­one has gone along with this work/play schedule.
We went to Williams­burg and walked through the whole area—another day of his­tory lessons.  We then took the kids to a race care/amusement ride place for a few hours as we all had had enough his­tory lessons by this time.  Cierra learned to greatly appre­ci­ate the twirl-a-ride.
8/17/13 is a work day.  Every­one pitched in to clean boat.  I did the much need laun­dry and then we hit the beach for a bit.  We ate din­ner at the marina.
The next morn­ing after fin­ish­ing clean­ing the boat and gath­er­ing up all our belong­ings, we drove to Rich­mond Air­port , with a stop in Jamestown, to leave to back home.