Maritime Trail

Total for this ride: 22.3 miles
Total for this year: 1387.5 miles

I'd planned two rides for this week's vacation to Virginia Beach.  Thanks to some wicked weather and planned activities with the family, it turned out that I did neither.  But I did do some unplanned rides.

I took one day to do some exploring along the main tourist district in Virginia Beach.  I lived in VB on three separate occasions when I was growing up, but I hadn't been there since 1972, so I was interested to see how things had changed.  I quickly discovered that one change for the better was the installation of a two-lane paved bike path ("The Maritime Trail") which ran parallel to the boardwalk for the entire length of the beach.  In addition to the trail, there were a number of other things which had been added in the past 38 years... an old Coast Guard station had been turned into a museum, a little plaza had been converted to a Naval Aviation Monument, and a giant 26-foot tall statue of Neptune had been erected.  It seemed like there were more hotels and condos than I remember too.  But the beach itself was pretty much the same - huge, clean, and crowded.

I got up to the north end of the trail but I wasn't ready to turn back yet, so I followed a guy on a bike who looked like a local as he headed off the trail and into a residential area just beyond the beach.  This tactic of following someone who looks like they know where they're going usually works well (remember when I was looking for the on-ramp to the GW Bridge in Manhattan in May?), and indeed it did again in this case.  I followed this guy onto Ocean Front Ave., a narrow street which is apparently well known to local walkers, joggers, and cyclists as a good low-traffic route for recreational activities north of the beach.  There were many of them out and about as I continued my little adventure.

When Ocean Front Ave ended I decided to head back to the main drag (Atlantic Ave.) and start working my way back.  After taking a look at the map, I wish I had kept going.  Just beyond where I turned around was the entrance to the "First Landing" State Park, where the Jamestown settlers first came ashore in I believe 1609?  I found out later that the park has several miles of trails.  And just beyond the park is Fort Story, which is home of the Cape Henry lighthouse, the first lighthouse authorized by the US government in 1792, and now on the National Register of Historic Places.  If only I had done a little more studying before this trip... I really would have liked to see the lighthouse.  It kills me that I was SO CLOSE... Oh well... valuable lesson learned.

I did make it back to the beach later that day, with wife and niece in tow.  It was getting pretty hot by then, so rather than make them walk the length of the boardwalk, I decided to rent one of those pedal-powered "surrys" to get up and down the beach.  I was disappointed that I couldn't adjust the seat to get a more comfortable pedaling position, but it was certainly better than walking in that oppressive heat.  I estimated that I did an extra 3-4 miles of pedaling in the cart, but I didn't include that in the daily totals.

Boardwalk on Dwellable