Sunday, August 24
Happily leaving Delaware Seashore, we crossed into New Jersey and drove through Ocean City. The driving was slow and tedious, but Ocean City seemed to be a really nice little beach town. There was lots of shopping and tons of mini golf—ever street corner, it seemed, had a mini golf course.
Fyi, I hereby deem New Jersey to be “The Right Turn State.”
But finally we were out of it, driving on Route 13 down to Chesapeake Bay. New Jersey is very flat here, with lots of country estates, immaculately mowed grass, and tall pine trees. Also fields of soybeans. And I noticed a good bit of Crepe Myrtle in bloom but with no leaves. Lovely, but odd looking.
And we had the excitement of crossing the Chesapeake Bay Bridge/Tunnel(s). I’d researched this carefully to make sure our motorhome could go through it. But all the toll attendant did at the gate was ask if we had our LP turned off, which we did, and she waved us on.
This is supposedly a 17-mile engineering marvel of bridges and tunnels. I’d thought it was 17 miles of tunnels, but no—it was probably only a mile or two of actual tunnels. We’d be trucking along on a bridge and all of a sudden the road would duck down and the sky would vanish and there’d be a ceiling overhead…
And whoop! You were out. Cool, but not as scary as I expected. Of course, Ed, who was driving disagreed—he said it was scary as heck.
Eventually we arrived at Machicomoco State Park. See review for details.
The place had a surprising number of Blue Grosbeaks. First one was “chupping” at the top of a tree, and I got a good look at him. And then later, one was singing—it was a lot like an Indigo Bunting song but calmer.
REVIEW: Machicomoco SP in Viriginia, site 3, $44
Small and new and lovely!
There aren’t a lot of RV sites, but what they have are very long and spaced way apart. It was like camping in your own private half-acre back yard. Our site 3 was right by the tent camping area, but there was only one tent site occupied and it was way over in another loop. I can’t imagine this place ever feeling crowded.
We had a pull-thru site, water and 50-amp electric. No sewer, but there’s a dump station across from the entrance to the camping loop. Our site had an asphalt pad and a big graveled space with a picnic table and firepit and room enough for a tent if we wanted. The RV site itself is out in the sun, but there are huge trees on the sides making it shady.
The trees were also, incidentally, causing outages in our starlink connection. It didn’t work on the RV roof at all. On the grass beside the motorhome, it was reporting frequent outages (but a very high transmission speed), however, the outages were of short duration and we noticed no problems with streaming movies.
The lady at the office was extremely nice. We had to check in and get a car tag; we couldn’t tell that from the signage but there were probably procedures for after hours check-in if you need it. There was a host at the first site in the loop, but we didn’t have occasion to meet him/them.
The bathhouse is in the middle of the loop and has six private showers—lovely. Note that the water stays cold for about 2-3 minutes, but according to the sign that’s because they have tankless water heaters and it takes a few minute to warm up. Sure enough, eventually it did—lovely hot showers! (If your water heater is functional you won’t care to read this, but it made us very happy.)
There seems to be nothing for kids to do here, but there is plenty of room for them to run and play or ride bikes. There’s no traffic or hills to speak of. The main road of the park is a big loop, and all alongside there is a paved bike trail, about 2 or 3 miles around. It might be a little hot in the summer, but it’s excellent for early or late runs.
Bubba’s Shrimp shack is a local chain, with the nearest restaurant about 10 minutes away. It’s very, very good! Fried fish of many kinds, and steamed shrimp that has spices on it and is perfectly cooked. I’m not sure if the shrimp is local or from slave labor in Indonesia, but a lot of the firsh is locally sourced. The fried okra is okay but a little greasy; the baked beans good but have lots of bacon; hush puppies okay; slaw good but not exceptional.
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