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My last day on the road
began very, very early. I woke with the alarm at 5:45, allowing for
a leisurely amount of time to do my morning routine and get some breakfast
before the 7 a.m. ferry. I hit the snooze bar once.
At 6:47
a.m. my body jerked awake.
Crap! I had to make a decision: try to make the 7 a.m. ferry, or just wait for the 1 p.m. ferry. Well, not wanting to spend another night on the road, I opted to try to make the 7 a.m. ferry and positively flew out of the hotel room. I have NEVER put my clothes on and gotten packed that fast.
To be honest, I wasn't completely dressed -- my boots weren't even tied on -- and I wasn't completely packed -- I nearly lost a duffle bag again on the way to the ferry. Fortunately, the ferry is maybe 90 seconds down the road. I got there, but had somehow taken the wrong fork and would up in a visitor's parking lot, rather than in front of the tollbooth.
Well, the tollbooth wasn't hard to get to. :) I imagine the attendant was quite surprised to see, if the pre-dawn dark, a set of lights roughly denoting a motorcycle come roaring up to the visitor's parking lot, pause for a moment, then come barrelling over a grassy knoll right at her!
I very neatly stopped right in front of her booth, handed her the fare, got my ticket and took off. Fortunately, she radioed ahead to the correct ferry because there were two ready to go and I would've boarded the wrong one -- but there were guys waving me on to the other and once on there, a quick conversation confirmed I'd be headed to my destination: Swan Quarter.
This ferry, too, took two and half hours, so I had time to tie things down a little better, including my own clothes, go brush my teeth, and get one of those cups of coffee I'd noted on the other ferry. It was much appreciated.
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I spent the ride mostly reading my copy of Tortilla Flat. The more I travel, the more I admire the works of John Steinbeck. Most of us have read Grapes of Wrath, I suppose, and that is truly a tale with travel. But his other works are equally rich, if shorter, and while some are set in one place, such as Tortilla Flat, it still has the feel of writing that appealed to me so much in Of Mice and Men and Grapes of Wrath. Most of these characters are displaced; some of them have homes, but are still on the fringes of society. I like these people; perhaps they remind me that things could be worse; perhaps they're just a good model of living life in the face of adversity. I dunno...perhaps the hermit in me admires the isolation Steinbeck's characters live in...
Click thumbnail for slideshow.
After the ferry docked at Swan Quarter, I followed 264 north to 345. I stopped in Englehard for a breakfast sandwich and gas and ran into my first bit of anti-biker prejudice, which amused me greatly. Only the older lady didn't like me -- the younger gal, who was actually doing the cooking, seemed eager to cook me a breakfast sandwich even at that "late" hour (it was 10 a.m.).
The road to Englehard was littered with storm damage. Most of the trees and debris had been piled up ready for some county or state dump trucks, I guess, but people were still working on the bigger items and some hadn't been tackled yet at all:
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Past Englehard, I turned onto 345 and was once more on the Outer Banks, though well north of where Okracoke is. I followed 345 up through Kill Devil and past Kitty Hawk. I didn't stop to see the Wright Brothers memorial -- I'll save that for next time. At this point, I wanted to put the hammer down and get home!
I found my way once more back to 17 and dealt with the cripplingly stupid layout of the roads in/around Norfolk. Once I found the bridge-tunnel again, I took the time to stop and take photos (most of which are here). This time, though, I saw a compact navy boat bristling with armaments cruising through the bay:
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I booked it after that, taking 13 straight up through Maryland, then across the Delaware bridge and the NJ Turnpike home. I noticed that the weather got colder and colder as I drove north until I was driving in 45-degree weather. Finally got in around 9 p.m. Not a bad day, altogether.
So THAT was my trip to Daytona. I look forward to going back and especially to more of the beaches and such. I think I might try to really plan ahead and get some places to stay on the beaches and take maybe five or six days to work my way down next time.
This trip ended on a sad note, however. Once I got back home, I found out that not only had an online buddy passed away, the second one in three weeks, but also that two of my undergrad classmates had gone before their time, too, one of whom I was very good friends with. Not to mention all the NYU students jumping to their deaths. And now, as I wrap this up, other friends are being burned out of their homes in California. What the hell is going on lately?? A road trip is known to be an escapist tactic -- at least for a while -- but in this case that wasn't necessarily a good thing. I only hope future trips don't end this way.
