Moving Along, Watching Milton

So right back to the food, I mentioned a very good Vietnamese restaurant, Lang Van in Charlotte that we actually visited twice.  The first time it was stellar and the second, good, maybe it was just what we ordered.

A very good noodle stir fry

Excellent Pho

Good wonton soup

Fried rice

Another stir fry with crunchy noodles

Before you think we are pigs, this made up 4 lunches for us:-)

As I said previously when we got all taken care of at the service center we had to go somewhere so we went to Cross Winds, a park we had been to previously and booked 3 nights to get our bearings, we had cancelled everything out to Sunday when we had the engine issue.  Although there is little to do near Linwood, NC, we figured we'd just extend 2 nights and then go to Virginia Beach on Sunday.  Well, that didn't work, they had no room at the inn for Fri and Sat night, so on to plan B.  We looked around and ended up going to a nice park in Fayetteville, NC, Fayetteville RV Resort.  It was a huge place with lots of walking and we didn't even unhook the truck for our 2 nights.

What we did do however was celebrate our 51st anniversary with shrimp cocktail, superlative bourbon and whisky, and stellar cigars, followed by a filet mignon dinner with hasselback potatoes and a wedge salad.  Some would say not much of a celebration, but it works for us.

Then off to Virginia Beach and the North Landing Beach RV Resort, a place we definitely had never been to before.  It was an easy ride until we were about 20 miles out when the road became so narrow we weren't sure even two cars could pass, they could, but wow.  We had a site all the way out on the end of a peninsula surrounded by water with an interesting twist and something we had never had to do previously.  You had to back up about 250 yards to get into the site!  

That's us marked by the arrow,
and we had to back up from where we took this picture!

And except for the first night, we had the point all to ourselves

With amazing sunsets.

It was quite a haul into Virginia Beach proper, or Norfolk but worth it.  We also found out this is off season for this area, in fact the first place we went to lunch, Seaside, very good by the way, we were the only people in there.  It was like having a personal chef that took care of us:-)

We got delicious raw oysters, oysters Rockefeller, shrimp bites, and an amazing crab and corn soup.

Yeah, we were almost done before I took the pic

One other thing I really wanted to do was take Jan to a restaurant that I used to go to on Norfolk layovers almost 30 years ago, it hurts me to say that.  The Surf Rider had the best crab cakes and the most interesting side.  I tell everyone never order a crab cake in a restaurant, but there are exceptions, this place and downtown Baltimore.  Now to think, first of all that this place would still be around, let alone still good after all these years was a stretch.  They now have about 7 locations, so we picked one on the water and went.  All I can say it was everything I remembered and more, we both were so pleased with our lunch, we talked about it for days.  First of all the crab cakes are amazing, basically all crab, a little seasoning and baked.  The unusual side is broccoli, now you say what's different about that?  Well it is an entire head of broccoli, steamed and comes with a small dish of Hollandaise.  even though I had told Jan about this for years, to see it come out is amazing.  Then we ordered a fried oyster plate, and not only were the oysters delicious and perfectly cooked, there were 22 of them!  We had no idea we'd get that many, so we also ordered a side of 4 shrimp, little did we know they were huge and butterflied so each side of one shrimp was equivalent to a big shrimp all on its own, even the hush puppies were wonderful.  It filled us for lunch and we had enough for dinner as well.  Service was great with a view, what more could you ask for?

In the picture it's hard to make out, but these are about the size of a baseball

Another thing we wanted to do while there was take a Navy Harbor Tour.  It was fantastic, the weather was perfect.  It goes out of downtown Norfolk from the Nauticus where the battleship Wisconsin is on display.  It's 2 hours with over half of it narrated with info and data of the many navy ships at dock or in dry dock.  It's a good take.

The Wisconsin, bow and stern.

Loading coal

Hard to see, but there are 2 nuclear attack subs docked here

The USS Dwight D Eisenhower, a Nimitz class carrier, 1092' long

We had been watching Milton like everyone else, keeping our fingers crossed.  We have friends that were directly affected and in the path.  There is a lot of damage, but everyone made it through okay, but it sure is going to take a lot of clean up and repair.  

I'll leave you with one more sunset.