Ease The MainWith Benevento and its crew

We were in the Great Dismal Swamp, and we had two inches under our keel. That’s when we saw it, the sign welcoming us across the Virginia state line.

We had been in the canal for two days. It was dug by slaves in the late 1700s and early 1800s. It has a lock system like the Panama Canal, but instead of locking up 80 feet we locked up 8 feet. But even though we were only 8 feet above sea level it still stopped the surge from Hurricane Arthur, but we’ll get to that later. A few hours later we reached the lock but we decided not to lock down because Hurricane Arthur was about to hit us. Later, when we were stripping the boat, the lockmaster (Robert) ame over to make me a conch horn, from a Triton’s Trumpet conch that we got in the San Blas Islands, and teach me how to blow the horn. I played it until my parents got annoyed. That night the hurricane hit. But instead of the 110 mph winds we got 10 mph winds. You get more than that on the playground. The next day it was the Fourth of July and we played with the fireworks that dad got the day before. Then as we were locking down, I got to press the buttons that open the valves to drain the lock. The lockmaster called it pulling the plug on the tub.

Next we went to Norfolk to watch the fireworks but there were no fireworks because of Hurricane Arthur. The day after that we went to the maritime museum which has a real lightship, which is like a floating lighthouse, that you can go in and explore. Then we walked around town. When we got back to the boat, the anchorage was crowded. Then the fireworks came on, it was one of the closest and best shows that we had seen!

The next day we toured the Norfolk naval base. There were a lot of destroyers. We also saw a few aircraft carriers that are for launching harriers and helicopters. Next we went to the MacArthur museum it is about General Douglas MacArthur. It had his real car and corn cob pipe.

The next day mom and I went to Nauticus, which is a museum about ships and the ocean. It also has the de-commissioned battleship USS Wisconsin. On the Wisconsin, we did something called spy ship where you find a bunch of clues and then stop the ship from being blown up. Dad didn’t come because he was repairing the auto pilot.

Then we went to the Lost Colony, Roanoke and the Wright Brother’s museum at Kitty Hawk. They had a replica of a Wright Brother’s airplane that could actually fly.

The next day we toured Jamestown, which is the first successful British settlement. They had an archaeological dig of the settlement and artifacts on display from the dig. We also visited Yorktown, which was where we won the last great battle of the American Revolution, where Cornwallis surrendered to Washington. The next day we went to Colonial Williamsburg, which is a living museum. It is all reenactments like reading the Declaration of Independence (live), and the storming of the palace. It was really cool.

I liked Virginia because it had so much history and fun places to visit..