Sorry old chap

Virginia is for lovers. As my wife pointed out, Virginia therefore must not be for old married couples.

First off, I must apologize to the East Coast. A few weeks ago, I had written how I wasn't very impressed with the beach at Cape Henlopen State Park in Delaware, and had extrapolated that to infer that beaches on the East Coast (at least those north of the Carolinas) were nothing to get excited about. While I continue to stand by those remarks, this past weekend showed me that there are some quite pleasant swimming spots to be found on this side of the continent, even if you have to drive a third of a day to get to them. 

Ah, yes, the drive. First, some background: last Friday (the 27th) being the occasion our tenth wedding anniversary, my significant other and I decided it would be nice to celebrate by staying overnight somewhere by the ocean. A timely article in the Washington Post on state beaches accessible from the District of Columbia led me to make a reservation for the three of us on Saturday night (the 28th) at the Hotel Cape Charles, "a new boutique hotel on Virginia's Eastern Seashore". According to MapQuest, the drive would take about four hours from our temporary home in Falls Church. 

As the Beatles once sang, I should've known better. Even taking into account stops for gas, lunch and bathroom breaks (and one photo-op), it took us eight hours to make the drive to Cape Charles, on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Eight frickin' hours! The number of traffic jams we encountered on the drive down at times rivaled the kind of freeway conditions I've encountered in Japan during Golden Week ゴールデンウィーク or the Lunar New Year holiday 年假 in Taiwan. Leaving at nine from Falls Church, it was five o'clock by the time we rolled into Cape Charles, having given up on doing some swimming at Kiptopeke State Park en route. 

Why, yes, we can.

If nothing else, the long drive drove home (no pun intended) to my wife and daughter just how big the United States really is. All those hours on the road, and we were still in just one state (and only the 35th biggest one at that!). Being a driver used to long hauls, I didn't mind the long drive, but the girls were surprised by how many different freeways we used on the trip down (and back). Proof that size matters was further in evidence when we crossed Chesapeake Bay on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, a 23-mile (37 kilometers) long span that includes two tunnels. On an artificial island where the road descends into the first tunnel, we parked our car and got out to take in the scene. The other side of the bay couldn't be seen.

Emerging on the other side (and still in Virginia), the Eastern Seashore was a very different world. Traffic was light, the scenery was pleasantly rural and, best of all, Cape Charles was just a ten-mile (16 kilometers) drive away. Rolling into the town of just 1134 souls, all was forgiven. Downtown consisted of just a few blocks, only a handful of cars were on the street (and these were outnumbered at times by golf carts) and everything was quiet. Once the realization set in that we weren't going to be staying in a teeming beach resort town, the fun started in earnest. The girls gave a thumbs-up to our tastefully-designed lodgings:

Things continued to improve when we took a stroll to the public beach and found it to be clean, deserted and only a couple of blocks from the hotel. Many of the buildings along the way had that traditional seaside town-look to them, the kind where you can relax on the front porch while enjoying the cool ocean breeze:

At the seaside, two elderly Korean women were looking for crabs in the surprisingly clear water:

Back in town, we decided to have dessert before dinner, a decision determined by the fact that it was already 6:30 and Brown Dog Ice Cream was scheduled to close its doors at 8. Chocolate ice cream washed down with Red Rock cola didn't do anything to hurt my appetite later on:

Small it may be, Cape Charles was once a major railway hub. At one point, there were two trains a day (one a sleeper) traveling to New York City. The golden age of railroads has long since receded, but several train cars have been preserved as a nod to the past:

There's a very useful word in Japanese, natsukashii 懐かしい, meaning something "dear, desired or missed", often uttered when one is feeling nostalgic. Certainly Cape Charles conjured up for me an idealized image of an America dating back 70 years ago, before the Interstate Highway System and suburbs came into existence, when people traveled by train, or in their cars on highways, and when different regions of the country had very different cuisines. A time when the population numbered only 150 million, and isolationism was the defining element of American foreign policy. Of course, those were also the days when segregation was entrenched, a third of the population lived in poverty and rickets was still a common childhood malady, but nostalgia can be nicely selective, especially for someone like myself who wasn't around back then. 

Dinner on Saturday evening was at the Shanty, Cape Charles' "happening" night spot (there was a live band that played later in the evening, and a handful of university students had congregated on the premises). Being by the sea meant seafood was de rigueur - dinner consisted of fish tacos, steak with scallops and a baker's dozen of clams, washed down with craft beer, of course:

The sunset. Remember that the sun sets in the west, and that we are on the east coast. We watched the sun setting across Chesapeake Bay, not the Atlantic Ocean. The other side of the bay, which was still Virginia, couldn't be seen. This country is big, I tell you:

The Hotel Cape Charles at night. Our room was the one on the upper floor on the far left in the picture above.

If we look a little sleepy, it's probably because this photo was taken on the balcony of our hotel room at 7:00 on Sunday morning.

 The upstairs hallway of the hotel

Breakfast on Sunday was a healthy spread of Greek yogurt, oatmeal and nuts and granola. Suitably fortified, we were on the beach by 8:30 a.m.:

As you can see, the sky was blue, the beach was clean and almost empty and the tide was in. The water was warm, and much clearer than the murky Atlantic Ocean we swam in a few weeks ago in Delaware. Large crabs were hiding among the rocks, and small crabs could be easily found in the sand while we were swimming. My daughter and I spent about four hours in the surprisingly warm waters of the bay. By the time we reluctantly started to pack things up around 1 p.m., more people had shown up and the tide was going out (meaning you could wade pretty far out), but the public beach at Cape Charles could hardly be described as "crowded":

After showering off back at the hotel, we got back into our street clothes and had lunch at Kelly's Gingernut Pub, housed in an old brick building, followed by a quick stroll through the small downtown:

All good weekends must come to an end, and so it was we left Cape Charles just after 3 p.m. for the long drive back to Falls Church. And long it was - counting stops to gas up the car, take in the view at the Eastern Shore of Virginia National Wildlife Refuge (see pic below) and have dinner, and encountering the obligatory traffic jams on I-64 and I-95, it took us 6½ hours to get back. Time stuck in traffic notwithstanding, going back in time to a small town along a quiet windswept stretch of shore was a very nice way to spend an anniversary.

Please accept my apologies.

By George

My daughter rides the vertiginous escalator inside the Rosslyn Metro station

What's up with the weather? Until a couple of days ago, we were sweltering in the muggy soup of 90+ degree temperatures (Fahrenheit, that is) and high humidity levels. Now the temps are barely in the 70's F (note Amber's windbreaker in the above picture) and the rain has been a constant presence all day today. Welcome to the east coast, I guess.

And welcome to Georgetown. The District of Columbia's most prestigious...um, district, home to many of Washington's most powerful...er, power brokers and a magnet for tourists from near and far beckoned us despite the change in the weather, and we answered the call. A quick ride on the Metro to Rosslyn, followed by an even quicker ride across the Key Bridge on the DC Circulator bus found us at the intersection of M Street and Wisconsin Avenue, in the heart of Georgetown's tourist zone. Join me on a brief photographic compendium of our Saturday afternoon in "the most obsessively political residential enclave in the world", according to Jan Morris (and The Rough Guide to Washington, DC).

The first thing we took care of was to have lunch, which we did at a pseudo-British pub called The Guards. The food and service were OK, but the prices were more reasonable than many of the overpriced dining establishments along M Street. Suitably fortified, we paid a visit to The Old Stone House. Dating from 1766, it's the only pre-American Revolution house in Washington still standing:

The small garden behind the home provided a quiet break from the hubbub of M Street. It looked and felt like I was back in Olde England - if Albion had giant willow trees, that is:

Inside, it's possible to have a gander at some of the rooms. The clock in the second-floor dining room is the only piece of furniture from the original house. I was surprised to learn that only the upstairs child's room had a closet due to a "closet tax" imposed by the British authorities. I was also surprised to find out that the reason the ceilings were so low wasn't because the colonialists were such wee folk (Washington and Jefferson were almost as tall as me), but were a mechanism to keep the interior from losing heat. I'm easily surprised:

Leaving The Old Stone House and M Street behind (albeit temporarily), we took a stroll along N Street for a few blocks, admiring the townhouses that we know we're never going to afford. To Pamela, it was like being in a much-cleaned up version of Taiwan:

No. 3307 was the residence of John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy from 1957 to 1961, when they moved to some larger digs at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The house next door is up for sale, but is undoubtedly out of our price range. Still, it would be something to say I live next door to where JFK used to reside:

As if to drive the comparisons to Taiwan home, on our way back down to M Street, we passed by a long line of people standing on the sidewalk. They were all waiting to be admitted into Georgetown Cupcake, where the TV series DC Cupcakes was filmed. And they were still out there when the rain came down, patiently waiting to buy...cupcakes. America has changed a lot since I first left in the late 1980's. While I welcome the craft beer revolution, I could've done without reality TV:

After wandering around some more, we found ourselves back at the intersection of M and Wisconsin, presided over by the old Riggs (now PNC) National Bank:

Venturing onto Wisconsin Avenue, we stopped for a glass of iced Jasmine green tea (me) and a couple of marble tea eggs (my wife and daughter) at a Chinese-style tea house. We also popped into a spice shop, where Amber and I sniffed a lot of the wares and Pamela bought some paprika and a grilled fish blend:

Eventually, we made our way back to the DC Circulator bus stop for the return trip to Rosslyn and home. We'll be back when the weather turns nicer, to visit the C&O Canal. Plus I want to see the steps where Father Karras landed after jumping out of Linda Blair's bedroom window:

Bully Island

The Kaminoge family took a walk around Theodore Roosevelt Island early this afternoon. Literally. It only took a leisurely couple of hours or so to make a counter-clockwise circuit of the small island located in the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. For those of you, like me before I moved here, who had never heard of the place, Theodore Roosevelt Island is both a nature park, and a national memorial to the nation's 26th President, providing 2½ miles (4 kilometers) of trails making their way through forest, marsh and swamp. As such, the island offers an almost idyllic break from the heavily urbanized Beltway...except for the low-flying jets that make their presence known every 2-3 minutes as they approach Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

The island is approached by a footbridge from Arlington, on the Virginia side of the Potomac (this is where we also parked our car). The waters around the island were constantly being crisscrossed by canoes and kayaks (though obviously not when I took the above pics).

A statue of you-know-who. Various columns nearby contained words of wisdom presumably spoken softly, but backed up with a big stick.

My daughter in the forest section of the island. On this warm, humid afternoon the sounds of cicadas could be heard. It was like being back in East Asia again.

As the photos below demonstrate, the marsh and swamp sections of the island were teeming with various forms of wildlife:

Across the river in Georgetown, the haves were enjoying the good life:

My little one found the opportunity to snap a self-portrait, while a passerby offered to take a family photo:

Back in Falls Church, 波ちゃん enjoyed a well-earned ice cream break at Baskin-Robbins. In the picture, she's proudly showing off an "America's Birthday Cake". You can make out the red, white and blue all over her face.

Though we pretty much covered Theodore Roosevelt Island this afternoon, there were a few shorter trails that we didn't get to. The close proximity to our apartment means going there on my own early on a weekend morning sounds like a bully thing to do.

Aaay

I've been back in the US for more than two months now, and it probably shouldn't come as a surprise, but it appears that I'm losing the battle of the bulge. Not that I was thin in Taiwan (not with all that greasy fried street food there), but I'm sure I've put on some weight since my self-repatriation. We don't have a scale with us here, which could be a blessing. But it's become obvious (to me, anyway) that I need to start being more careful about the kinds of food I'm eating, and to get some exercise.

One of the few things I've been missing from having lived in Taiwan is the easy access to mountains, and the hiking trails within. I've also been missing milk teas 奶茶 (the bubble teas here can be atrocious), but considering what they did to my waistline back on Formosa, it's probably for the better that I've been cut off from my suppliers. But back to high mountains, which seem to be in short supply around here. Instead, I've been having to make do with short walks on mostly level ground along local nature trails. Such excursions have been great for the soul, but haven't done much for body shape.

This morning I went on one such jaunt, to the Winkler Botanical Preserve in nearby Alexandria. It's 44½ acres (18 hectares) of plants and trees hidden in a residential area. The place is apparently quite popular during the week with local school groups, but on this overcast Bastille Day I was the only person around. In fact, during the 90 or so minutes I spent walking around on the various paths, I didn't see a single other human being the entire time. It reminded me of those solitary Tuesday afternoons in Dakeng 大坑. 

And just as in Taiwan, the sights and sounds of civilization were never far away. As it is in Northeast Asia, everything seems to be much more densely packed on the East Coast, at least in comparison to how it was when I growing up way out west.

One somewhat confusing thing about the Winkler Botanical Preserve is its opening hours. According to a website I checked out, the park is open from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., except on major holidays (which probably explains why it was closed on the Fourth of July, when I first tried to visit). The sign on the partially-open front gate this morning stated that opening hours were 8:30-5 daily. Yet while I was walking around, I came across another sign informing me that the preserve was open from 7:30 to 3:00 Monday to Friday. If the latter were true, then I was guilty of trespassing. It certainly felt that way as time passed by without another soul in sight.

There didn't seem to be a whole lot of wildlife around, either, except for the spider webs I kept walking into. There were a lot of frogs to be heard, hopping into the water as I approached, and I did see a group of geese, enjoying the good life.

Pride of place at the Winkler Botanical Preserve has to be the large pond in the center of the park, which would no doubt have looked better under more ideal lighting conditions. 

These walks are nice, and I look forward to discovering more places to explore, but I miss the mountains. A group of my classmates are planning on doing some real hiking in the Shenandoah area early tomorrow morning. While I'll be busy tomorrow, hopefully I can tag along on future such outings. My waistline might thank me for doing so.