May 13-July. Just a 2 hour drive and we were back home in Va. Beach. Along the way, we made it a point to stop at a VA landmark for a good old southern breakfast with Smithfield ham and biscuits. It is the Virginia Diner. We even bought a half a dozen to take to Mom and Dad, plus a couple for our own lunch. Dad at 95, still LOVES those ham biscuits! Yes, they are that good! When growing up, we sometimes drove all the way out to the diner after church for Sunday lunch. Over the years, anytime we were anywhere near Wakefield, we HAD to stop for ham biscuits. So Doug and I still do that on our trips back home.
The Virginia Diner has been a refuge for folks who like down-home cooking ever since Mrs. D'Earcy Davis served hot biscuits and vegetable soup to hungry customers way back in 1929. In those days the little Diner was a refurbished Sussex, Surry, and Southampton Railroad car. As business grew, so did the restaurant with dining room after dining room added on to accommodate a growing list of satisfied customers. Today the Virginia Diner has been replicated and the old railroad car has become a legend, but its quaint atmosphere has been faithfully preserved and is still reflected throughout the restaurant. Traditional southern hospitality and efficient service blend with an atmosphere of red and white tablecloths, bentwood chairs. All are reminiscent of those early days when the Diner began to serve customers peanuts fresh from local fields and prepared in its kitchen instead of after-dinner mints. Today this peanut business has grown into a national and international gourmet mail order business, and the Virginia Diner is rightfully known as "The Peanut Capital of the World". Located in Wakefield, Virginia, the Virginia Diner is sixty miles south of Richmond and sixty miles north of Norfolk, halfway between Petersburg and Suffolk on US Route 460.
We are staying at Ocean Pines RV Park, just outside Oceana naval Air Station. The park is a converted mobile home park. The grounds are kept nice with some nice shade trees. The problem is the ‘homesteaders’, who are active duty using the park as temporary housing & can often get extensions past the 60 day limit. I don’t agree with that because it makes it very difficult for retired RVers to utilize the park. Plus, I think a few retired vets are living here because one extremely old RV bus looks like it was driven right out of the local dump &,with the rest of his site trashed, makes the campground look bad. But that is another story for another time.
Naval Air Station Oceana is a military airport, and is a US Navy Master Jet Base. NAS Oceana is the only Master Jet Base on the East Coast. In 1940, the U.S. Navy acquired the land that would eventually become Naval Air Station Oceana. At that time, the surrounding area was mainly farmland susceptible to flooding, but it served as a useful outlying field for the rapidly expanding Naval Air Force centered at NAS Norfolk. NAS Oceana has grown to become one of the largest and most advanced air stations in the world, comprising 6,820 acres (including Dam Neck Annex). Obstruction clearances and flight easements total an additional 3,680 acres. NAS Oceana's primary mission is to train and deploy the Navy's Atlantic Fleet strike fighter squadrons.
Virginia Beach is the most populous city in Virginia, 39th in the US. Located on the Atlantic Ocean at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, Virginia Beach is included in the Hampton Roads metropolitan area. This area, known as "America's First Region", also includes the independent cities of Chesapeake, Hampton, Newport News, Norfolk, Portsmouth, & Suffolk, as well as other smaller cities, counties, and towns of Hampton Roads. Virginia Beach is a resort city with miles of beaches and hundreds of hotels, motels, and restaurants along its oceanfront. Every year the city hosts the East Coast Surfing Championships as well as the North American Sand Soccer Championship. It is also home to several state parks, several long-protected beach areas, three military bases, two universities, and numerous historic sites. Near the point where the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean meet, Cape Henry was the site of the first landing of the English colonists, who eventually settled in Jamestown, on April 26, 1607. The city is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as having the longest pleasure beach in the world. It is located at the southern end of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, the longest bridge-tunnel complex complex in the world.
If we are here early enough in the Spring and late in the fall, we like to go down to the boardwalk and take our stroll when there aren’t many tourists here. Otherwise, it is just too crowded and hard to find a parking spot. However, there is Dam Neck Annex, with is part of the main base. We can always go there and walk on the beach because hardly anyone is there since it isn’t open to the public. There is also a very nice campground over the dunes from the beach, but we choose not to stay there. We stayed there a couple of times and the salt spray just really did some damage to the RV coating and rust is a problem. But we are only a few miles away.
Ahh…just going down to the beach and watching the waves and birds when it is quiet really gives me a great sense of serenity. We go either early morning or late afternoon because neither one of us like to spend time under the hot sun for health reasons. When I take my camera, and you know I do, I like to take a towel and lay at eye level with the birds for close-up shots. Just an old beach girl having fun! I grew up here so still enjoy the beach. I remember many days on the beach as a teenager with my friends trying to attract the attention of those dark tanned long haired blonde surfer dudes!!! I even used to carry my brother’s surf board up and down the beach to pretend I knew how to surf. Of course, I always used the excuse of needing to get home when asked if I wanted to go out in the water. I even used to iron my long hair to look like a beach girl!! Oh, the fads we followed!
Here is my own shadow ‘selfie’ and you can certainly tell I do indeed have my camera at the ready!!
Lots of visiting and projects to do while home this summer…..
