VA beach!

We arrived in VA beach and met Anna and Jon at their apartment, which was only a few blocks away from the beach. We took an armful of luggage inside and immediately mounted our bikes and rode our way downtown. We took a nice moseying pace to the boardwalk and took in the scene. It was a 180 from Asheville. There were tons of beach going tourists (off all shapes and sizes...) loud margaritaville type music and seafood restaurants galore. Despite the lack of breweries, we chose to eat and drink at a local tap house. We attempted to get some information from our server, but when we stated "we love full flavored hoppy beers," and his reply was "oh, you should try a lager," ...we knew that we may want to trust our own judgement. We tried a flight which was instantly forgotten because he never wrote down what it was that we wanted. Good thing that the company was perfect!

We rode our bikes back for an early night. Jon was having ankle surgery in the morning, and we figured an early night without much alcohol would be best. That was until we decided to hit up the local scene, Nat's bar, where you can eat, drink...and smoke. A few vicious games of pool (ahem, with the women being victorious) and cheap beer later, we continued back to the apartment.

In the morning, Anna and Jon headed off to surgery, and Eric and I explored the area on our own. We drove down to the Back Bay nature preserve to walk around the marshes. We walked the narrow boardwalk through tall grasses and trees in the marshland. Crickets, spiders, an birds fluttered in and out of the trees. We took a long dirt road to the dune hike, which was just a short walk to the ocean over a few dunes. The sun was unforgiving at this point. We stood on the desolate beach and watched the waves lazily crash on the beach. The sandpipers were busy tapping their noses into the ground, scurrying away from the waves and chasing them to find lunch in their retreat. Our heads were foggy with the heat, and we were tempted to just head back to the car after only about an hour of exploring. The beach was beautiful, but it was a beach. We stared at the waves, starting to think that it may be nice to head back to touristtown and swim. Just then, we spotted 2 dolphins diving in and out of the waves. They were close enough to capture a few pictures before they headed out to sea.

We drove back to town, picked up food for lunch and dinner, then grabbed the surfboard and bicycles to go to the beach. We spotted more dolphins, Amanda from the beach, and Eric from his surfboard! A few hours of splashing, playing, and getting whistled at from the lifeguard was enough to cap off our exhaustion, so we returned for a night of cooking and eating. Thank you to Anna and Jon who were fantastic hosts!