Caroline and I went fishing, and she hooked the damned ugliest fish I’ve ever seen. I swear, as that thing jumped out of the water, it was screaming, “Hey, I’m your long-lost daughter; take me home with you!” Stupid me kissed it, remembering the princess-and-frog story and thinking there might be an element of truth to this fish’s story, and instead, all I got was this cold, wet fish mouth of a kiss that smelled, well, like fish. Sure, I, too, was thinking, well, if this is my daughter, what am I doing kissing it on the mouth? Sorry, but there’s no explaining this one. Fairy tales coming true were not in the cards today, only a case for Sigmund Freud to try figuring out.

Back on terra firma, I think the nightmare is over when, as I’m innocently walking down the street here in St. Michaels, Maryland, a killer crab scuttles toward me (sideways, of course) and soon has me in its claws ready to pop my head off. Oh My God, this even-uglier-than-the-fish crab garbles with a sinister crab voice, “I’m your daughter, big daddy; come on now, give me a big kiss so I can turn back into your loving daughter!” Just about then, Caroline came to my rescue and, with deft agility, tossed this sea monster into a pot of boiling water. I kept my head and, with a ramekin of drawn butter, sat down to enjoy a lunch of ugly crab.

While we didn’t get to visit an open Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, as we were too early for that kind of stuff, we did have fun with the photo antics, so there was that.

And there was this great blue heron that attracted our admiration, as they always do.

We are driving south over the DelMarVa (Delaware, Maryland, Virginia) peninsula and will be taking our time about it.

Sorry to disappoint you if you were looking for an incarnation of my daughter materializing in a cattail, but this story isn’t quite that absurd – seriously. This is just a plain old common cattail photographed at the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge in Maryland.

It’s difficult to comprehend just how big the Chesapeake Bay is as it collects the waters of more than 150 rivers and streams from six states that feed the bay. As the biggest estuary in the United States, it makes sense that its size should be incomprehensible.

I know that this is not a great or even good photo, but it’s of a bald eagle. For those of us who live in deserts, seeing eagles is not a very common sight, so I have to leave this reminder here that we saw eagles while we were here.

The skies are gray, overcast, and dreary, but even with the pallor overhead, we are enjoying the bird watching. We spot cormorants, hawks, buzzards, a dozen small varieties of birds (no bird guide with us), and a lot of cranes. We linger a while, hoping for a break in the sky; we wait on eagles, hoping to see them launch from their perch on high, but under these placid conditions, the scene is a meditative one, inviting us to take a nap in the car within the wetlands we are touring. Sleep will have to wait, though; we have a destination in mind.

That buzzard is throwing us some stinkeye as we interrupt its delightful meal of rotting meat on the bone with a side of fur. Before it threw its attention on plucking out our tongues, we moved along.

Oops, I didn’t realize I was shooting this with a shallow depth of field, so maybe you can’t make out the sign behind Caroline and Jessica, but we’ve just entered Virginia.

Some things never seem to change much, and Susan’s Seafood here in New Church, Virginia, is one of those places. Not that we’ve ever been inside this establishment, but nine years ago, when Caroline and I were on our first cross-country road trip, we traveled this exact path, and between this photo and the one just above, you’ll see we are at the same two locations on that trip. Click here to see the old blog post.

Free-range pig?

The shell of this ruin suggests that this was at one time an incredibly beautiful home, at least in my purview. Why it was allowed to fall into disrepair is anyone’s guess, but if I were to venture to offer my 2 cents, it likely would have been due to economic reasons as we are too far off the beaten path, and small farmers are an archaic relic of the past.

I believe we were approaching the bottom of the peninsula at this time, but details are lost.

It sure is flat out here.

The crop that defined a large part of the southeastern United States and a snow-white blemish on our history: cotton.

Here we are, thinking the third time will be the charm; hmmm, what is it about this Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Tunnel that Caroline and I are here either in the dark or on cloudy days? And why didn’t the engineers of this man-made phenomenon known as one of the seven engineering wonders of the modern world not build more pullouts for us tourists who want to stop and take crummy pictures of a bridge under gray skies? I did manage to get this one nice photo of Jessica at one of the two pullouts on this 20-mile-long four-lane bridge and tunnel highway crossing the lower Chesapeake Bay.

It’s almost evening as we arrive in Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia. After checking into the Woodlands Hotel we take aim for the historic district for our reservations at Christina Campell’s Tavern, where we’ll be dining.

There’s such great attention to detail for keeping things as authentic as possible. Hopefully, Williamsburg is never thrown to corporate profit monsters who will reduce this experience into the horror of money above all.

It’s kind of strange that my daughter has been living out here on the eastern seaboard and has never visited this part of the world.

The highlight of the evening was the entertainment provided by the gentleman above, who sang a wonderful song titled “Bold William Taylor” while he played his guitar. I do know the difference between a guitar and a tin whistle, but I didn’t have a nice photo of him playing the guitar, so you get this photo of him playing a tin whistle. Caroline really liked his particular rendition, but this version on YouTube comes pretty close (and has bagpipes).