Saturday, June 28, 2025 — We moved Kosmos to her assigned slip first thing in the morning, when the current was less strong. Eric was able to back in with no problem. Then went through the whole process of situating Kosmos all over again. Since it was a smaller slip, we were able to tie her up much more securely than we had in the other slip.
In the afternoon, Karen and Mark picked us up and gave us a tour of Virginia Beach. Morningstar Marina was on Shore Drive, and we stayed on the same road all the way to the eastern end of Virginia Beach (though the road changed names a few times along the way). The road paralleled the Chesapeake west to Cape Henry (the southern mouth of the bay), then turned south and ran along the ocean.
Along the way, we passed a huge military base (3 miles long!), a large state park that appeared to be undeveloped land, several quaint neighborhoods that looked to be higher-end, and eventually got to the touristy area, called Oceanfront. In the neighborhoods, we could see glimpses of beach between the homes; in Ocean Front, there was what seemed like a giant wall of relatively new, tightly packed condos and hotels blocking the view of the beach from the road (for the most part. There were glimpses here and there). On the other side of the road, it was one shopping center after another with assorted shops and restaurants. We were able to snap some photos of Oceanfront at the red lights.
In a lot of ways, the scenery was reminiscent of San Diego: the military base looked similar to the bases in San Diego, driving through the park was similar to driving through Balboa Park, and the area south of the park looked like Del Mar, with large, mostly higher-end custom homes on small lots. Oceanfront was kind of Mission/Pacific Beach-esque, though with a lot more tall buildings. We’d say that biggest differences were how much greener Virginia was and how much more varied and charming the architecture styles were.
Throughout the tour, Karen and Mark pointed out lots of places we’d probably want to visit and activities that we’d probably want to do while we were in town. There were so many that we were feeling overwhelmed. We definitely won’t get bored here!
After the tour, we went back to their house and visited with Lauren and Karen’s other adult daughter, Ashley.
Lauren very generously let us borrow her car, so we drove ourselves home from their house. On the way back, we stopped at a place called the Taco Burrito Company for dinner. It was basically like a Chipotle, where you picked which kind of tortilla you wanted and chose which ingredients you wanted in your tortilla from the assortment laid out behind the counter.
On the way back to the boat, the map app guided us back via surface streets. The areas we passed through weren’t nearly as charming as the areas we’d seen on today’s coastal road tour. It was mostly low, blocky buildings that made this area indiscernible from any other suburb in the US. We did see this cool sculpture
The sunset was mostly obscured by the heavy cloud cover.
