After being so sick last night I was a little worried about
today’s drive. We had to do all our
packing this morning and since I was still moving slowly we didn’t make it out
of the hotel until almost 11:30. My
fever had broken in the night and I was much better but I still felt weak and
sick, the way you do after a stomach bug.
James was starting to feel sick too and some discomfort. But we were determined to make it as far as
we could.
We hit a small snag right off when the highway suddenly
ended miles from our exit. It was very
strange, the road went on but all four lanes were completely closed by
construction cones. There was no easy
way to get to the road we wanted so we ended up changing our route and heading
east instead of north. Since we were
going that direction anyway we decided to stop by Virginia Beach and drive up
the coast via the Chesapeake Bay Bridge.
It was pretty slow going out to Virginia Beach. We had at least a hundred miles on a freeway
rather than on the interstate highway but the real trouble was that everyone
else had begun to get sick. We had to
stop many times. I was finally feeling
better although I had a lot of sympathy for the affected parties.
It was six o’clock by the time we arrived at Virginia Beach
and there was a fair amount of traffic.
We considered getting a hotel there but they were very expensive. We did find parking though for a short stop
at the beach.
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| Me and my boys at Virginia Beach |
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| Will runs from the waves |
The boys were very happy to get out and play on the
sand. Colin immediately made friends
with a group of kids and joined in their football game. He can make friends so easily and loves to be
in the center of a crowd. Charlie too
found a friend, a little girl around two years old with curls and a cute dress
followed him around the playground. It
was absolutely adorable.
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| Colin makes friends quickly |
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| Playing in the water |
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| Running in the waves |
We went down to the water too and the boys had fun running
in and out of the waves. Jon was so
happy. He loves running in the water and
despite our warnings about wet clothes he got completely soaked. It brings me joy to watch him play.
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| Enjoying a break from our drive |
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| Me and James on Virginia Beach |
We spent a few more minutes back in the dry sand and
Charlie, Jon and Will enjoyed chasing seagulls up and down the beach. Will and Charlie went off for a bit and
played in the sand. I love watching
these soon-to-be brothers play together.
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| Will plays in the sand |
We were back in the car and headed out of town by
seven-thirty. The sun was setting as we
crossed the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and we stopped part of the way across to enjoy
the view. There was a pier with a lot of
fishermen and Charlie was very upset when he saw a ray that one of them had
caught. “Oh no! That’s bad! They have to go back in the water.” I tried to explain about fishing but he was
adamant that people had to leave the fish in the water.
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| All of us on the pier in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge |
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| James and his boys |
The Chesapeake Bay Bridge is astoundingly long. I thought I could see the other side but no,
it was just more of the bridge. The boys
enjoyed it although they wished that the two underwater tunnels were made of
glass so that they could see out.
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| The soon-to-be five Freitags |
After the bridge we had a bit of trouble when Charlie
started to get sick again. When I was
sick last night he tried to comfort me with the story of how he had thrown up
blue and then felt better but now he was really worried about throwing up
again. Thankfully he didn’t!
It was time for us to find a place to stay but the first
five hotels we passed were all full.
There were not a lot of options on this road but eventually we found an
vacancy around ten-thirty. The boys were
all exhausted and fell asleep pretty quickly.
I’m hoping for an early start tomorrow.
When we are traveling though I pack a duffle bag with all our overnight
things so we only have to bring one back in instead of unpacking the whole
car. It makes a huge difference for our
time in and out.
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| Jon held tight to Daddy's arm as he was falling asleep. |
Everyone is sleeping and I am off to join them.
Goodnight!
