Norfolk, VA

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Mercifully, we did arrive at Norfolk last night and spent the night rocking at the dock and not rolling and pitching at sail. It is raining again but we're told it should stop by midmorning. We have no plans except to join Harold on his complimentary walking tour. We are docked right beside Nauticus, so a great location especially if we decide to revisit that museum. We'll see if we find something else on the walking tour or not. The other options today were Naval Station & MacArthur Memorial from 8:45am to noon for $50 each and Old Cape Hetry Lighthouse & Botanical Gardens from 1:15pm to 4:45pm for $50 each and includes a boxed lunch from Independence. All aboard is printed on the Ship to Shore today. It is 4:30pm for a 5pm departure.

Tomorrow looks trickier. We are supposed to dock in Coinjock, NC at 11:30am and depart at 1pm. According to Harold Coinjock has a 6" salt lock at the end of the Great Dismal Swamp Canal, a gift shop and a steakhouse. Or else nothing. The only thing offered here is the Wright Brothers National Memorial from 8:45 am to ? for $65 each. We signed up for that as it sounded like the only way off Independence for the day and we've not been since its all new and reopened. It is a mystery how it will work though. We'll see.

We  had another big breakfast even though it is Monday today because the menu was just too appealing. At breakfast, I asked our tablemates if their cabin clock had the correct time. The answer was yes, that it was wrong on arrival but since it didn't change on Sunday morning now it is correct. I went to the office and requested our clock be reset. I was told it should have happened automatically, then she offered to reset it now. She did, thankfully. The Internet was down most of the morning, but after breakfast it is back. I couldn't look up Nauticus before but now I've learned it is closed on Mondays after Labor Day. We already informed the kitchen that we'd be off the ship for lunch assuming we'd spend the day in Nauticus. Oh well, now we'll spend it somewhere else or eat from the lounge snack bar if we find ourselves back here. I am sure if we showed up in the dining room for lunch now anyway, they'd accommodate us but we'd hate to do that. We'll see what we learn in Harold's 9:30am walk.

It started pouring rain sideways as we set off on Harold's walk. Clay snagged me a blue plastic poncho from Independence and thank goodness because everything that wasn't under that blue bag got soaked. Luckily it was warm today because Clay got wet to the skin from shoulders to heels. Harold turned us loose from his walk between 10:30 and 11am. It was at the Taiwan Friendship Pavilion. We sheltered under there and stripped off layers and tried to dry out a bit and Google our options as it seemed it might stop raining. We decided to head for the MacArthur Memorial as an easy walk. Bad news it is closed on Monday too. I don't know what happened to the ship's excursion people who paid to go there. We wound up at MacArthur Center across the street. It is a full block, 3 story shopping mall. It was dry! We used the restrooms and stripped off wet layers and sat for a while. I was ready to call it a day, eat lunch at Famous Uncle Al's Hot Dogs  that Clay had picked and return to Independence in defeat. It wasn't raining as hard when we went to eat. As we finished eating, I decided that we could just cross back to the mall and watch a movie and still have an hour to walk back to the ship. So we did. Bonus was finding 8 Below Ice Cream on the 3rd floor of the mall with Regal Cinema. You may recall our recent discovery of rolled ice cream in Richmond. We had Reeses Cup again, but these guys used 4 full size cups instead of the 1 we had at Narwhal. It was much denser and candier!

So we had a good day in the end and an all-American experience.

I am going to assume that anything else that happens after departure this afternoon will either not be noteworthy or that I'll come back and edit if it is. So, I'll post now before we start sailing.

Clay & I skipped cocktail hour and watched sailaway in the dark from our balcony. We headed south across to Portsmouth and south down the Elizabeth River. We passed lots and lots of big ships in dry dock. Tracking us with Clay's phone's GPS it says we're only 38 miles from Coinjock. Clay says that is land miles since it will be more than 12 hours before we arrive. Too bad it is at night as it looks like little rivers and canals and bays and lakes and it would be something to see all the time, if we could see. Oh well. Hopefully there will be some more sailing like this in the light!

We think we've figured out tomorrow's logisitical quandry. I think it is a typo. I think it is supposed to be 11:30pm tonight that we dock in Coinjock.The time line works that way and makes sense in a context of sloppiness. More later.

So, we were right about the typo. Another correction is that the 6" salt lock occurred during dinner at this end of the canal, not the other end as earlier described. It was at Great Bridge Lock. We are traveling, at night, in the Chesapeake & Albemarle Canal. We left dinner ASAP to go up top outside and see. We'd just gone through a drawbridge that had closed behind us and was full of cars while close on either side of the ship was forest and ahead a black shiny ribbon. They are not even using flood lights or spot lights as headlights. It is still really cloudy so no moon or stars either. It was eerie. I hope there will be a lot more cruising like this but in daytime!

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